“The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough.”
Ezra Pound, “In a Station of the Metro”

It used to be that I spent a lot of time in airports, standing in line with people, waiting to get in/out, on/off, back/forth.
I loved to study the faces of the people around me.
Maybe because I was always looking at people, they looked back.
In any case, there were three magical times, when someone standing next to me –someone overwhelmed, overburdened, frustrated—handed me their baby to hold while they loaded luggage, or wrestled with folding a stroller, or searched for something in their bag.
What a gift it was—to hold some stranger’s child.
All of which is to say: I miss standing next to other people.
I miss a stranger deciding they could trust me.
I miss the weight of that trust in my arms.

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