The Madonna of E11

Dear Ones, I have had the opportunity to be at airports in the early morning several times over the past few months. I can hardly imagine anything more tender, more unfiltered and human, than someone walking through an airport terminal before 6am. Today’s draft was inspired by a family sitting across from me at O’Hare, and by the prayers to Saints I learned in Catholic School.

Blessed Mother,

asleep on a careworn airport chair,

head against a zebra-striped neck pillow,

youngest one wrapped in a pink fuzzy blanket -

one gold glitter shoe poking out from below,

strands of child-brown hair from above -

Our Lady of Terminal 2,

forgotten, low-ceilinged hallways of chipped linoleum -

Receive the gaze of ocean deep love from your husband

upon your soft-closed eyelids.

Bless this sacrament of liminal waiting.

Holy is your jet-black hair,

the scuffed soles of your clean white sneakers,

the sleepy brown eyes of your older son,

the fruit-scented breath of the little one

across the tender veins of your neck.