(being delayedly posted from Denver, CO)

At Gervin’s Sports Bar at the San Antonio Airport, which has the soutitre “The Iceman Cometh,” you can Have Your Cake And Drink It Too, with a chocolate Tennessee/Jack Daniels Torte. This has to be my most favorite thing in all the airports of all this country.

The woman behind me is on a conference call. “How are you?” she asks, in a British accent.

“I’m fine,” I answer.

And it’s true. I feel great. I’m sad to leave Sari and Monica (who plays tonight at Luna, by the way) – sad to leave this great local music scene – but I got really excited strapping on my enormous Dakine backpack again.
I love to be going somewhere. And the uncertainty which used to terrify me is now part of the excitement. I’ve never seen or met the woman I’ll be staying with.

Sarah Rose asked me how to identify me at the Denver airport. I couldn’t think of what distinguishes me from the rest of the other girls wearing all black, but it’s definitely the backpack.

I walked into the Frontier terminal with a smile on my face like I’d just been handed the keys to the country. And now I’m eavesdropping on a conversation about international waste management. Or I think I am.

“I don’t understand,” the British woman says, ignoring me. “All the tasks are completed, the status is updated – what’s the holdup?”

She needs to start drinking some cake.

A family walks by, four football-fan kids and a dad, the two oldest boys wearing sweatshirts with flashing red lights on them.

A woman walks by, shrouded in a sweatshirt like she’s covering the severed head of her enemy beneath it.

A man walks by. He looks damn pleased with himself. I couldn’t say why, but he looks…pleased.

“Waste Management Process, page 2,” the woman says. “At the top you have headers for the different environments, right?”

I need a header for all my different environments. Modified from Zeppelin: Going to Colorado with an aching in my heart.

I write poetry furiously until it’s time to board.