day 29: JFK

I fell in love in JFK because there was a terrible windstorm and lightning
And our plane was delayed for over 3 hours.
We all had to get off then, because of some rule:
if your plan is delayed for over 3 hours, you must get off the plane
(i don’t know why)
It’s lucky, because:

A plane left right before we were scheduled to take-off
They made it out and we were next
And then we had the announcement “We’ll be returning to the gate”
People were fine for the first thirty minutes.
After that, it was all rising annoyance and pointed questions for the air stewards
And a baby crying and more annoyance
As if babies can help it, when they need a good cry.
Three hours isn’t that long, in the scheme of the universe
And I’ve never minded waiting
So I did some Sudoku and tried to listen a book on tape that I’d been meaning to read but couldn’t bring myself to focus on, and found that I couldn’t bring myself to focus on the tape either, despite literally having few other options
Maybe it’s the book, I thought, then:
Or maybe it’s just me.

At three hours, the person in the seat next to me was ready to mutiny
Talking about lawyers and refunds and an outrage
I distantly thought about this news story I read, about this plane that got struck by lightning mid-flight
and crashed… I think, somewhere over Portugal
Only one passenger survived, a young girl, whose row had gone into some dense shrubbery
And she walked away with only a broken arm
She walked, literally, away until she found a cloister of nuns
Was it nuns?
Who brought her to hospital?
Or maybe it was just a hospital.
I can’t remember.
Either way, I don’t worry so much
About outrages when the alternative is flying hazardously through a windstorm.
​
And after all,
if we had taken off on time
If we had chanced it, squeezing boldly through the burgeoning winds into the open air
I would never have fallen in love at JFK, with you
Standing blearily at a generic coffee stand, the sign fluorescently declaring
“I LOVE NEW YORK”
with a magazine under your arm and a caterpillar neck pillow cradling you softly