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The rain is slower at airports
but the planes are wary --even here
you turn around in the street
as if their wings are reaching from behind
and strangers asking, "What's your name
now?"

In this hangar the air still warm with bread
--some mother has forgotten her child's name
is calling you with her belly
sticky from blood, shrapnel, the fuselage
sheared in half --these planes lined up
for some runway, for the kisses :the skies
who love you. You think it couldn't be.

You visit terminal after each terminal, expect
something to blossom, lift you into air
into some song from around a dark table
--what you hear are your cheeks
brushed by birds whose hind legs touch down
on the roadways --you come here

to stay, lay on your back
so you can hug more and more sky
--your elbows curling back, being born
and every one turns, gets out the way

--you come here to leave
and this rain before it dies
at its loudest, calls you into the sea
taking form under your arms the way a sheet
covers the dead, warms them and already the air
a shine from your new name.

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