Nobody to Leave the Bags
3am, gate 47, just me. a recorded voice keeps warning the empty terminal not to leave bags unattended. there are none.
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3am at gate 47 and i'm the only one here. flight got pushed to six, everybody with somewhere to be took the hotel voucher, and i'm somebody with nowhere to be, so. plastic chairs with the metal armrests built in so you can't lie down.
every few minutes a recorded voice tells the empty terminal not to leave bags unattended. there are no bags. there's no one to leave them. she says it anyway, calm, to the carpet, and then the building goes quiet and counts to whenever and says it again.
the departures board flips. flips for cities i'm not going to, times that don't apply to me. i watched a janitor buff the same forty feet of floor for an hour, back and forth, headphones in, and i wanted to wave just to be a person to another person, but i didn't.
it hit me that i could sit here past six. that i could let the flight go and just stay, and the board would keep flipping and the voice would keep warning the carpet and nothing would notice. the system doesn't check if you board. it checks if the seat is empty.
i'm going to get on the plane.
i think i just wanted to know the choice was mine and not the building's.
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