A POEM by MORGAN WILLIAMS

Airport

At the airport bar, a man takes the seat next to me. Directly. There are

plenty of other spots and on another day my guard would be up but

airports are a game and not real and ridiculous and well, for one, I was

just in my socks and ma’am step forward please and lifting my hands

up when I step through the thingy in case they find a knife in my bra

like somehow I’d do that and then forget about it. It’s silly that I’m in

my socks like this on the bare airport floor but it’s fucking sillier if

you’re out here sockless and anyway we’re back at the airport bar now

and this man next to me is (by my non-airport standards) too close but I

ordered a double-shot vodka lemonade because flying makes me

nervous and right now the drink is making me nice and the promise of

plane Biscoff cookies later is making me nicer and I tell myself if this

man starts talking to me, maybe I’ll entertain it because the anonymity

of being a traveler at an airport feels like it’s protecting me and I would

consider it low-stakes practice at talking with men. Sometimes, I find it

really hard to talk to men and my friends call this lesbianism. I watch

the soccer game on the TV above the liquor bottles and I’m rooting for

both teams until I’m not. The man next to me has a nice watch and a

leather wallet and I’m glad he doesn’t talk to me, kind of looks like

he’d take too long to finish his sentences, and it’s for the best because I

just remembered the Soviet space dog, Laika, who went up but didn’t

come down and did you know there wasn’t one Laika, but several, and

so many little sobaki that went up but didn’t come back down?

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Morgan Williams (she/her) is a writer of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. She studied creative writing at Chatham University, where her work has been featured in the undergraduate literary magazine, The Minor Bird. She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.