Waiting for the plane to arrive in Berlin, waiting to get through passport control, waiting waiting waiting.

People who wait: work, read, sleep, text, eat, talk, fidget, pack and re-pack.  Do nothing.

Things that you wait in or for:

Trains, planes, lines, love

someone or something to arrive,

your life to begin.

People moving from place to place, jockeying for

the best position to put them in line

to wait again

for something else.

Nobody wants

to be stuck in the middle or the end, afraid

that something will be left

behind: the baggage compartment

now spilling over with somebody else’s

stuff, someone who somehow snuck past

security, with their overstuffed

carryon, insisting that

it could all fit; people who never learned

to dump the excess

as they go: jackets, shirts, dresses

anything that is not worn more than once

is destined

to be left behind.

My mother often tells the story of forgetting my brother, who was off

doing something: jumping over houses (to hear him tell it); scaling walls bordering vacant buildings with large black signs: Keep out! To be fair, he did crack his head open on more than one occasion; he tells us this now, proudly, at family gatherings.  He doesn’t

look like he is scaling many walls, showing up slovenly in stained, jersey shorts, faded yellowing t-shirts that look impossibly stretched out and worn-

in, just plain weary;  bleary-eyed.  Across from me, an old man on the sagging plastic bench leaning against the peeling wall in the lounge at the airport, waiting

for something.

An English couple scuttle off as the woman yells (in her perfectly British accent); they are off to get a coffee, a drink, something to take the edge off; they give up their seats and someone else hurries over, taking their place,

waiting in line.