Traveller
I soothe the baby with my mind, though it howls as though it were being beaten or burned. It howls like a thing tormented and not a bundled, surely adored creature cradled in its mother’s arms who is seated in the back third of a Boeing 757 headed for Denver from Chicago O’Hare. All else in the aircraft as it prepares for takeoff is murmur, both of quiet anticipation and the frustration that can’t be said, only sighed and grunted and hissed through clenched teeth to the surrounding passengers. I wonder if it the little one’s first time on an airplane where ears pop and beneath everything is air and air and air and faith in science, faith in something. I can hear its terror, its hunger, its unsurety. I could be projecting. I probably am. I do not hear the mother comforting the baby and I desire comfort, unnerved by the cries far more than I am when considering the dynamics regarding a giant metal boat sailing through cloud. She says now and again a firm, exhausted, “STOP.” The baby, being a baby, pays that firmness no heed and shrieks all the louder. Every cry exiting its lungs seems a fresh demand to leave, get out, get safe, get warm, get fed, get what’s needed – whatever that is, in its fevered, frantic infant mind. Silently, I tell it that we’re fine, we are travellers, and we’re headed home. I think about home. My home. A full table. Warm breezes. That no matter what happens, we journey, I think as loudly as I can, and no matter what happens, we can’t fall off from our path without making a new one. We’re safe because we are.
The baby, perhaps finding my succor in my psychic cosseting, perhaps finally losing the werewithal to let loose another tattered, heaving wail, fades into a few gags and frittering sobs and then, silence.
