Airport in Houston

This is a poem/story about a lot of people all with different stories, and for different reasons, all witnessed the same terrrible thing. It’s about 10 pages long, but pretty good

There is a storm coming
A man with a black suitcase walks into the airport
A woman stops writing in her black journal to look
A toddler points and doesn’t understand what’s happening
An elderly man looks and his face grows cold
Two twin boys stop arguing with each other as their mother covers their eyes
A woman’s phone drops onto the floor but no one moves to pick it up
A young girl pauses her music but she can't bring herself to look at it
A conversation between a group of men is cut short
For a second it felt like the world stopped turning
Then life starts up again
The storm has come and gone


The voices had come back and refused to leave
It sometimes keeps him up at night
The sweat covers his sheets, sleep has become a luxury
You can see it in his eyes
He is planning something
His shady apartment has been cleaned up to perfection
A bedroom but no place to rest
Money but no value
A plan but no sanity
Contacts but no friends
A life but no reason to live
Part of him is rejecting himself, he feels sick and uneasy
He feels dizzy when he stares at the black suitcase in the corner of the room
It reminds him of what he must do, how close he is
It haunts him
This idea is like a scratched record
It plays on repeat, over and over in his head
Never stopping
He reaches into his suit pocket as his phone rings
He says nothing but hears a monotone voice on the other side
“John, he’s at the airport”

Metal desks and steel filing cabinets
Ironed pant suits and pressed neck ties
The tapping of shiny dress shoes in brightly lit meeting rooms
It’s almost like clockwork
She sits at her desk with the screen in front of her
Her pens are arranged and the black journal sits at the corner of the desk
Everything is in its place
The numbers fit on the pages in perfect structure
The spine is barely worn and the pages are still crisp
She has kept it in pristine condition
And yet, if you look at her hand you can see a slight twitch
There are purple bags under her eyes and her socks don’t match
Sometimes she speaks with a slur
She smears her 6’s when she writes
She has flaws
Her life is not clock work
She is an imperfect cog in a large machine
She is human
She sometimes forgets her coat and umbrella while it’s raining
Her hair is in a messy bun and her skirt doesn’t fit right
She taps her pen while a man with a crisp silver tie walks in
“Christine, we need you to take a business trip to Houston”


When the only thing you can understand is your age, life makes sense
Someone asks how old you are and you put two chubby fingers in the air
Those two fingers mean a lot to someone
They mean the most to your mother
His mother wishes she could have a better way of showing how much he means to her
She wishes she could afford a house with a room to paint for him
She wants a place to hang all his little clothes she dreams of buying
She wants to give him the world
To a mother, the world means having a home instead of a run down apartment
She sleeps on the couch while he sleeps on her chest
The water stopped working two days ago
The walls are peeling and you can hear the neighbors arguing late at night
But when she sleeps she imagines their house where her toddler has his own room
You can see her smile with her eyes closed
She has hope
She has hope that she can paint his room blue and hang airplanes from the ceiling
She has hope that one day she will get her own bed and not have to deal with a decrepit couch
She holds onto the hope
She wakes up and watches him sleep peacefully
She has made up her mind
She whispers to him softly
“Don’t worry Kyle, you and mommy are going to fly away”


The gospels don’t teach you everything
They tell you how to love everyone and everything under God’s creation
But what do you do when you feel like you can’t go on
When you have been sitting in the same confession box for your whole life
Listening to what other people have done and how they messed up
Where their life has lead them and how they don’t know where to go
He has devoted his life to listening
He listens to their story
He listens to what he is called to do
He listens to the world around him to try and figure life out
But listening is no easy job
His knees are tired and his legs don’t quite walk at the same rate
His job has been tiring
He sits in the confession box and is doing what he does best
He is listening
The man on the other side of the screen talks in a low voice
His sounds tired
Run down
He says he has given up
His clothes are ripped and you can smell him from the other side of the screen
What happened to him
“Forgive me Father Morris, but I have no further need for society.”


An eye for an eye
A punch for a punch
You get what you give
It’s a simple philosophy
But if it seems so simple why doesn’t it work
Two boys play soccer in a small suburban park
If one gets too rough the other will punch him
If one starts playing dirty the other will do the same
They live by this philosophy
They seem so similar and yet worlds apart
If they stand next to each other you can’t tell them apart
But if you ask them if they are similar they will say they are completely different
The closer they seem the farther they grow apart
They push and pull in opposite directions
But when one gets mad the other will become furious
Their mother turns a blind eye and accepts they are just boys being boys
And what’s the harm in any of it?
What’s the harm in the arguments?
In the fights?
In any of it?
Their mother calls them home with good news
“Jeremy, Jackson, we are going to take a trip to see your grandmother down in Houston!”


A woman walks into a bar
She has a few beers with a friend and then leaves
She crashes onto her couch
She wakes up the next morning and goes to work
She walks in and goes through the same routine
She does what she knows how to do
And you could argue she wants to do it
She is a slave to the routine
She enjoys it
She goes through life doing what she needs to
And she is happy
She can drink with her friends and then end up staying in a hotel that night
She does what she wants and does what she can
The world looks so different to her than to the rest of us
The world flies past like a cloud next to a jumbo jet
Her seat is put slightly back and she has a half full Diet Coke can on her tray
She reads an email from a friend, she smiles as she reads it
Her hair is in a messy bun and her shirt has a jelly stain near her chest
She is comfortably placed with tennis shoes and baggy clothes
She is almost dozing off the when the plane starts to make it’s slow descent
She is flying with her best friend next to her, her fiend talks with an excited voice
“Hey Jenna, I can see Houston from here!”


18th birthday
Smiles and birthday cake
A day dedicated to the person who was born into this world
Her parents love celebrating birthdays
They love showing how much she means to them by giving gifts
Shoes
Clothes
Whatever she likes
But she doesn’t care too much for it
At least not for all the presents
She feels the world doesn’t need another trinket or electronic
She appreciates real and true relationships with people around her
Her family doesn’t quite get that
She just wants a birthday with no gifts
Just good people and maybe some food on the table
A chance to be surrounded by people is the greatest gift anyone could ever receive
Her 18th birthday she finally got that
Her best friend lives in Orlando but she is coming to see her
They haven’t seen each other in years
She is so happy to be able to talk face to face with her again
Her heart jumps for joy as she gets a text on her phone
“Hi Janet! I’m going to be arriving in Houston tomorrow!”


“Dude, we aren’t in G Minor”
“I wasn’t playing it in G, I was playing an A minor chord progression”
“Can either of you keep the tempo correct? You’re speeding through it like crazy”
“It’s not our fault we can’t hear you over how loud the bass is turned up!”
“If I keep it any lower you can’t even hear me!”
“Well then it’s a good thing we didn’t ask for a strong bass line”
“Will any of you keep quiet? We don’t have much longer before they kick us out of the studio”
“Yeah, but we have to be finished with this song by tomorrow”
“If we stop we’ll have nothing to play in Houston”
“That’s not the issue here. Jacky, can you remind me what happens in the 3rd verse”
“Dude we have gone over it like 6 times”
“Yeah, either we finish this now or we get kicked out for being overly loud”
“Sean cool it, we’ll figure it out but I would prefer we practice”
“Well I would prefer to leave. Screw Houston we’ve been at this for too long”
“Yeah I don’t think we can just keep going like this”
“Fine, I will make a deal with you all. Last gig.”
“Last gig?”
“Ever?”
“Ever. We do Houston and then we’re finished”
“What about the few songs we have created for the album”
“We release them as a couple of singles. Split the profit”
“Alright then. This is the last gig.”


There is a storm coming
John walks into the airport with a gun in his black suitcase
Christine stops writing in her black journal when she hears the shot
Kyle points and doesn’t understand what’s happening
Father Morris looks and his face grows cold, he was warned this would happen
Jeremy and Jackson stop arguing with each other as their mother covers their eyes
Jenna’s phone drops onto the floor when she sees the body
Janet pauses her music but she can't bring herself to look at it
A conversation between the members in the band is cut short
For a second it felt like the world stopped turning
Then life starts up again
The storm has come and gone