A man kisses his ginger-haired wife, then wipes his thumb across her freckles, smearing her cheek. She scrunches her nose, fake-mad, eyes beautiful green, and cries, OH NO! Honey! I forgot the show tickets! It’s okay, he says, we can get them at the office.

I follow behind them on the moving walkway. She sets her head in the negative space of his shoulder and neck. An electric cart motors by, spattering orange on the walls with its flashers. I’m separated from outside by a pane of glass.

The first plane hits like a man running to his gate. He makes it, out of breath, just in time. We are about to leave, then a siren goes. Like dogs released into a pen. Like a son disappearing down the street. Like assassination, like astronauts sent to the moon, like a lover shutting the door to take a bath. It goes.

Then a flower blooms. Through glass. Amid radio chatter and ambulance warbles, we have the same gaping tunnels for mouths, and I see my reflection in the glass, next to the blooming flower. I am significant. Almost infinite. Like zeroes cobbled together.

I have shut my eyes, and in shutting my eyes, begun to see. The bartender mixing gin into a glass, overpriced drinks, insulated supply and demand, time pinched into a sharp point.

I exist in the sadness, within the sadness and around it, like walking along ocean shore. The ocean is a stone. The moment is a sculpture.

The tram needle-threads the airport, her mascara is cat scratches down her cheeks, her hair a nest for him to hide his face. They form a credenza with their bodies and weep inside each other, while I am beside the flower, now carefully wilting.

The espresso machines have stopped, the silence sounds like polished steel, and an orange flasher cycles emptily. The second plane hits. We are all stuck.

Hey, I’m Roman. I’m working on my debut novel, 20xx, a work in magical realism. I write on Substack.