The Arrivals Photograph

Everything is aimed at the twelve steps between the sliding doors and the taxi rank. A long belted coat that reads black in any light, sunglasses sized for an hour that has not happened yet, a silk shirt in the bag for the change before descent, and a boot with a heel low enough to run a connection in.

Nobody is at arrivals. The photograph you have dressed for gets taken maybe one flight in twenty, usually by you, in the mirror of a bathroom near the carousel. The white sleeve finds coffee somewhere over Greenland, the coat that photographs like architecture behaves like a duvet on a full plane, and the second outfit costs you the only bag space you had.

You still walk out of that door better than anyone else on the flight.