Waiting for the Plane

by Sue Ellen Thompson

Swathed in the fragrant, gauzy shawl
of a Hawaiian night, we stand
on the tarmac with a dozen others,
waiting for the flight from Honolulu
to arrive. My parents and our five–year–old
are on their way to meet us in Kauai

as we make on our way home
from Yokohama. The inter–island flight
takes barely 40 minutes — it should be here
by now. But the sky is a solid,
distanceless expanse of darkness
without stars. Thirty minutes

pass, then forty–five. Conversation
begins its slide into anxious silence.
A slick, slow–motion tide of dread
is inching up my spine. My husband’s eyes
are wired to the blackness of the sky.
He was an orphan by the time

we married, our only child our only
try at filling that strange void.
Without parents, without children,
will our marriage survive? Tragedy
befalls the young and undeserving
all the time and I could be

among them, my life no longer
charmed. Then, in the farthest reaches
of the sky, a star appears, its light
equivocal at first, then brighter
and unwavering. Then the night
air gathers in a vast, collective sigh.