At the airport

I roll my bags, having packed my America in, enough of it to last. I know that when I hit the Athens air full of fat sounds and large gestures I will succumb to your grin, to your parents' accepting welcome and expectation. I will bring my language to your family's children in the country of fathers with dark eyes and heavy hands waving the white handkerchief like a banner. I will watch my hands alternately on the long handle of the bríki as I raise the bitter liquid to the top, a froth of sweetness capping my success. And your parents will taste it and you will taste it and finally I, all alone, will taste it and sink in the white-walled room of our concrete house, where the breeze will take lavender from the mountain and carry it to me, where the sun will lay its hand on my cheek as I hang the clothes, handling the rusting clothespins on the lines you strung over the balcony just far enough so that the towels would not slap the pocked rails. And then I will toss the bucket of soap water down the narrow marble balcony and it will shine like a mosaic floor and I will stand with my face toward the sun, the plums on the trees, the afternoon ripe and reaching me.