Christmas Eve is a hive of frustration.

Snowstorms in Denver or endangered birds
    nesting in Chicago—reasons. Bags all

checked thru. Feliz Navidad card from her
    domestic worker (more a friend really)
         in the carry-on. Phone dead but nothing

(now that there is something) to text. Cannot
    even in the anxiety form a

complete thought. She was going back any-
    way—wasn’t she?—with good reports, making
         good money with good friends. Going back now,

more a child than ever, caught out despite
    having practiced off and on now and then

for the eventualities of ill-
    ness, then (probably) more illness and the
         non-alternatives that precede the deaths

of others.
              Runways haze into the sun-

    set.
         If she presses against the plate glass,

she might see the ocean. Almost, she thinks,
    the panic cascading, almost made it.