KILL ME INSTEAD

He sits with his long legs bent, elbows on his knees. He looks up and glances around frequently. He leans back, rubs his fingers along his cheek and chin, then leans forward again. His eyes fall on families arguing, pregnant ladies scurrying to the bathroom, men in too-tight shirts and manbags being stared at. He knows nothing will be the same after this.

His hands keep traveling up to his hair, rubbing over and feeling it, like he isn’t quite used to the buzz just yet. At one point he sighs and hangs his head, shoulders hunched and elbows resting on his knees, like there’s too much weight on his back. He closes his eyes and both hands find his new hair, holding and supporting his head.

The twenty-some year old man stays like that for several minutes before letting out another sigh and reaching down to pick up his bottle of Lipton’s Green Tea that he knocked over. He rights it, then puts it next to his backpack.

Another man, this one black, comes over and talks to him. Their eyes understand and forgive the smiles absent from their lips. Their conversation is lost to the crowded airport, everything blurring around them. Expensive food stands and gift stores of every variety, people running and others waiting, children crying and mothers fussing, planes roaring down long roads to take flight- the closest things people will ever come to understanding the feel of the wind above the clouds.

Eventually they both nod, and the black man moves off. This first sighs and watches him go, then leans back again, resting a hand on his knee while his other finds his lips to rub his calloused fingers over. His eyes lose themselves to his thoughts again, and he is gone.

Across the room, a preteen boy taps on his sister’s shoulder, and she pauses her iPod and looks over at him, interrupted from her book’s finale.

“Hey,” he mutters, extending a finger to point at the man. “Is that guy going to Iraq?”

She glances at him. The gestures, the hair, the army suit and matching backpack. The way he watches people. “Yeah; I guess he is.”

He makes a face. “That’s really sad.”

She looks at the man until he glances at her, and she focuses on her book again. “Yeah. It is.”