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Satin Weed

There was a picture hanging on that wall and it looked as if the person didn’t have a head. A headless man. Without a horse.

“I really like it with soy.”
“I love it with soy.”
“I thought it was healthy. Now I drink almond milk.”
“It needs a little something else. You just microwave it, and it makes it in four minutes.”
“Ya, it makes a ton. Austin I can even split it.”

Three baristas said all this stuff, in no order, and I wrote their fruitless conversation down because I was bored.
Now they’re done talking. They shut their little traps and packed up their squeaking barista instruments. They all went home to their Austins and their Charlies and their poor sappy children. No one left to entertain me now. Poor me.
All I see when I look around are sharp things. Walls and tables and a bunch of moving people with their arms swinging ‘round as dead propellers might, and their ponytails all pointy and fierce shaped.
A broom passes by. The broom is made of spears. I smell popcorn in my left nostril and lights shift from a dark blue to a light hazel. Why is hazel the color of a light? It shouldn’t be. Lights should be bright and luminous, like the sharp edges that today is full of. Hazel light is dark and misty, yet sparkles under my slippery eyelid. Sparkly like glass art rippling through the food court of the lobby, arching, composed of origami dandelions – reaching – gaining height until they are taller than skyscrapers.
The dandelions can see the sun, above the clouds.
I’d like to be a dandelion.
Some say dandelions are weeds – worthless. My friend, nothing is truly a weed. Nothing is worthless. Nothing is unwanted. You think an object, a person, a soul is worthless you just go ahead and ask the laddy who created it. You think a dandelion is a weed you just go ahead and shout at the toddler who talks softly to herself, crushing the stems of wildflowers in her hands because she’s got them and she’s gonna give them to her mother for mother’s day. I dare you. 
Weeds are stronger, you know, stronger than everything but their creator. They push up.

“Pardon me,” I sigh. I push through the food court trying to find somewhere to sit. I got bored of my last seat. I will be here for rather a long time. By myself.
Headless. In the airport on a mission.           
To go on a work trip. To go to college. To taste dandelion wine in Italy and meet with Ray Bradbury to discuss literature. Too bad he’s dead.
It doesn’t matter where I’m going really. I don’t even remember. I’m supposed to be at gate C4 and on flight 184 I will depart and there I will pull out my handy dandy ticket that is all folded neatly in my pocket but I don’t have a seat number on there and then I will let the ticket lady look at it and “BEEP,” I will walk through and sit down in the cushy seat and I will get out my golden Iphone, like a golden egg, and I will browse. I will observe.
But for now I have a whopping two hours to contemplate the meaning of life.
The airport smells of sausage and my nose is hungry enough to swallow a whole reindeer but my body refuses to move. I am sitting now. Good rest.

I am the child of a pilot.
I could get on any plane, really, after checking in online.
The world is my oyster.

Maybe it’s one of those oyster that does not have a pearl inside. The pearl fell out. It didn’t know what its purpose was and thought it was just another bodily organ of the oyster and so it went Walk About and it went AWALL and it went MIA.

Because everything is sharp.

The table is sharp. It is metal. My computer is sharp. It is carbon.
The dandelions are sharp. In my fantasies I see a dead body pierced through by a thin petal, blood dripping down into the food court. Fantasia.

The air is sharp, as if it is cold.  Stiffening – becoming solid as it enters my nostrils.
So I take off my glasses….
And nothing is sharp anymore. The world is satin, the airport is velvet – my fingers are silk, fiber, plush leather! I have plunged the entirety of my senses into a vat of flour, and I laugh zealously because flour is so fine, so soft, and all around me are down pillows. Mine.

I pull out my Iphone and change my gate. I will go to gate C3 and I will get on plane 183. I am unpredictable, I am strong.
I am a weed.




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