The airport is full of people
who look like people 
we used to know. Every third face 
a memory, a whelming obligation
to say hello to another not quite so-and-so.
Swallow your tongue.
He is not your father 
who stands in the terminal—a pillar—
the same totem-carved face, 
the same crag-eyed detachment.
He won’t notice your stare,
and that is good:
It breaks your heart.

Tara Tamburello’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust + Moth, Menacing Hedge, The First Line, The Blue Route, Tikkun.org, and anthologies by Vestal Reviewand Sans. PRESS. She is a past winner of the Bucks County Short Fiction Contest and a recipient of Eastern University’s Dorothy McCollum Siebert Award for creative writing. Her short plays, including a collaborative piece that ran in the 2009 Philadelphia Fringe Festival, have been produced in Pennsylvania, where she lives with her husband, two children, and an introverted black cat. You can find more of her work at taratamburello.com.