32 | Psychopomp Magazine
women of indeterminate national origin at the cash registers rarely make a sale. When they do, the purchase is bagged with the customer’s family name written across in bold black letters. The merchandise is held on a shelf until departure.
But the departure never really happens, the merchandise remains unclaimed, the arrival that everyone waits for is delayed again and again. The travelers, however, continue, despite the never-ending delays, to cultivate hope like tiny wilted-out houseplants inside themselves.
Some travelers pass the time on the benches telling stories of far-off places they’ve visited or heard about or of the towns and cities where they were born. Stories of why they left or why they stayed as long as they did. Most are fantastic, horribly exaggerated lies. Lies that are wild and impossible in anything like the real world. Stories that mutate, grow, and become more intricate and ornate with each telling. These fictions serve, in some way, to keep the travelers real, to insure they continue to exist until they finally get underway to that place they’ve been trying to arrive at their whole lives.
But still, in time, most people forget whether they are departing or arriving or merely in transit.
And some come to realize that the whole trip—the departure, the arrival, the return, the far-off humid countries, towns, and cities that hang in your mind, vividly familiar like dreams you swear you’ve had before—they all take place right here inside this cavernous lounge. That for these travelers who have truly decided to go, the world outside the terminal has ceased to exist in some essential way.
And for others, this fact is something they can’t bear to see for what it truly is. ♦