February 12, 2021

The Unlikely Intimacies of Airport Security

Someone’s socks are unrolled, one by one.

Ahead of me, a stranger stands exposed

to the camera’s stripping eye. A traveller

 

lifts her arms as though to dance, her partner

keeps the rhythm with her hands, tap-tapping

softest underarms, pat-patting downwards,

 

waist to knee. The secrets of a wash-bag spill.

A wrist watch ticks in a plastic tray.

I re-thread my belt, adjust my clothes,

 

beside a man I’ve never met, who does

the same. Complicit in this brief coincidence,

our shoes reclaimed, we lift our bags and walk away.


Sharon Flynn, The Bangor Literary Journal, Issue 13 

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