At the Airport

Assignment: You are at the airport. Suddenly you see someone who was significant for you and whom you haven't seen in years. What happens?

It was already the long coat, to begin with. Far too neat. He had never had one of those. On the contrary. Hadn’t he always loathed long coats. Gravediggers, he’d argue, they wear long coats. And doctors. But who’s keen on seeing those? You just never know what is hiding underneath. Or hanging underneath, of course. Particularly in a park, long coats call for caution!

The second thing that stood out was that tiny suitcase. The adjective “risible“ sprang to mind. It had once been red and was now covered with an infinity of white or yellowed round stickers, in all sorts of sizes, criss-crossing each other.

I slightly squinted my eyes. Now it seemed as if I was looking through a small, rectangular window, into a crimson-red starry sky. Once you look long enough, you can see depth even in the darkest of darkness. Some seemed larger and appeared to be closer, but that didn’t necessarily have to be the case. No matter how proximate something felt, it said nothing about the actual distance.

Of course, all of this time, he wouldn’t have noticed me.

Through my eyelashes, an entire universe silently slid past me.

Pulled along by Mars, on four of those shitty little wheels.