COLLAGE OF AIRPORTS

                                    I.
an airport is a city where no one is staying
no one is looking at the streets thinking of
living on them no one is looking up at the windows the
eyes of the houses wondering what is happening behind them
everyone is on their way to somewhere you wonder
where are they going will they get there

                                    II.
when they were spending the last of the sterling
on caprese baguettes with basil he said
I’m so sorry and she said only short words so she would
not weep in front of everyone coming and
going to and from London for their own reasons
words like okay like I’m fine it’s okay

in the air they sit between two sets of sleeve
tattoos and the screens noisy with blood
the engines are filling their ears they talk softly
they wonder if they’ll ever arrive

                                    III.
there are lights below me a city of
people in their homes full of lights
I am riding the shadow that is cutting the sky

that is tipping faster and faster this is the end I think
as I have many times thought on other days and lived

I hope you know I love you I only said it
ten thousand times.

Bryana Joy is a writer, poet, and painter who works full-time sending illustrated snail mail letters all over the world. She also mails monthly new poems to subscribers in a postal poetry project called Puzzle Pieces. Her poetry has been published in an assortment of literary journals and has appeared most recently in The Christian Century, Chestnut Review, and Beloit Poetry Journal. Bryana has lived in Turkey, East Texas, and England, and currently resides in the Lehigh Valley in Eastern Pennsylvania. Find her online at bryanajoy.com.