I passed through the airport in Minneapolis once.

Maybe, we brushed elbows in the security line. We took off our shoes side by side while they poked through our luggage.

That's when it hit me: there are so many people I'll see once and then never see again. Like, one look is all I'll get, for life!

I walked straight through the metal detector and never looked back.
And now, I keep my distance: six feet away as six feet under, masks as muzzles so that we speak only in glances.

I should have given you a better look on my way to the gate,
before the flights to our final destinations.

Every meeting is both a reunion and a rift.

Strangers like us move apart
with each hollow hello or comment about the weather.

I mean, what if every meeting like that was a loss?

We are good as dead to each other
on arrival and departure,
footprints swept clean by
the wind created from dead bodies
walking the other way.

I should have said this to you
about the virus
as proof of our survival,
how we’re in this together, how your loss is mine.

Each new disaster,
natural or otherwise,
keeps seizing our lungs and
our last breaths like we have
nothing to say.