Airport Prayer

January 2025 | poetry

If I count the times I cried today,

I would need more than two hands—

an 81 year old passes through security

and tells me her mother just stopped driving

yesterday at the age of 108; a woman at the counter

hands me my coffee and says Here, baby;

and when we are lining up at the gate by letter

and number and I don’t know where to go,

a woman tells me conspiratorially that I should

just go behind her. Sometimes life feels conspiratorial.

Like we are conspiring to help each other despite the noise.

How can I explain why I am crying for the glassy-eyed

dog being carried in a tote? For the little boy being led

bleary-eyed to catch a plane I pray will land safely?

I don’t want to be a part of this world, but I can’t stop

negotiating with time, with flesh, audience to myself,

spectator to my own body. I couldn’t bear to be called

baby every day and poured a cup of something hot.

I think it would break me. I can’t bear to be be born

again into the kindness of each and every moment.

I want to believe we are not witless, just wingless,

trying to soar above the wreckage we have made.

That tears are never wasted. Is it foolish to pray

for something you know already exists?

For something that is everywhere?

Esther Sadoff

Esther Sadoff is a teacher and writer from Columbus, Ohio. Her poems have been featured or are forthcoming in Little Patuxent Review, Jet Fuel Review, Cathexis Poetry Northwest, Pidgeonholes, Santa Clara Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, among others. She has three forthcoming chapbooks: Some Wild Woman (Finishing Line Press), Serendipity in France (Finishing Line Press), and Dear Silence (Kelsay Books). She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Hole in the Head Review.