encasement (storage e)

    in the airport terminal I sit down in a row of chairs without looking at the man in the chair beside me… my chair is adjacent to a narrow formica table where I set the coffee and muffin I’ve bought… I’m tempted to look at the man sitting on the other side of the formica table but I do not want to take a chance and meet his eyes… a familiar animosity must be what warns me off… warnings that I realize are chewable I’m learning are better swallowed… I watch how this man expresses affront toward me without interrupting his focus on his cell phone… the formica table between us isn’t wide enough for him to have the distance from me he requires… this next  sensation has nothing to do with what he knows… though I react as if it could… his disgust is my own as I lie on my side my knees to my chest… in a bed I am a child with my mother her body moving… her body wrapped too close around me… nothing about this should surprise me… nothing is the space between one breath and the next… even if the space is decades long…