I was young and asleep and dreaming of things which get lost upon waking. It had been a long day in the Mexico City airport. My asthma acted up almost immediately upon arriving and we couldn't find any outlets in the main terminal so my mother went and pleaded in broken spanish for mercy and electricity while my father sat with me on his lap, the both of us listening and watching my breathing intently like a child hovering over an insect for the first time. The breaths were short and shallow.
My mother eventually succeed in her quest and we were allowed to enter the lounge area where there were ample outlets and men in suits sitting and reading and wondering what this poor white family was doing cowering in a corner and producing a bulky machine which buzzed and hummed while the child sat still, breathing in and out slowly and surely like a steady locomotive gaining speed.
We missed our connecting flight. But we caught the next one and Mexicana airlines lifted us up and away from the outlet-less airport and into the sky where the clouds looked like the puffs of water vapor from my asthma machine only I did not put those there. I fell asleep, then, in the water vapor clouds of some great entity which was having trouble breathing.
Miles Stearns writes poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, and essays. He writes other things like grocery lists and author bios.