Published in Overland Issue 215 Winter 2014 · Uncategorized Departures, arrivals Stu Hatton Airport of the future. Devoid of take-offs, landings. Derelict hub. The passenger era having followed the strip-lights to the exit. Heat of steel, glass. Kids barefoot on tarmac. The encampments were quick to spread here. Spaces once open. Signs no longer apply. Former meanings, functions. Arrows lead to nothings, nowheres. Proliferation of tents, tarps, improvs on a theme of shelter. ‘Temporary’ uttered less and less (palliative word). Fires throw the only night-lighting. The thinning. Safeties, sanitations (relativities). Sustenance amounts to sprouts in water. Seeds once saved. Harvesting water from the slants of roofs. A hangar become hothouse, an airliner become home. Hierarchies trampled (what of hierarchies of need, triage?). Travel is but a story. The endless elsewhere. What was once a city’s intersection of complexity (flightpath web). That ancient theme of waiting. Stu Hatton Stu Hatton is a poet, editor and researcher. He works in mental health at the University of Melbourne. His books are available from www.lulu.com/spotlight/stuhatton; he sometimes posts at outerblog.tumblr.com. More by Stu Hatton › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays 22 November 202422 November 2024 · Fiction A map of underneath Madeleine Rebbechi They had been tangled together like kelp from the age of fourteen: sunburned, electric Meg and her sidekick Ruth the dreamer, up to all manner of sinister things. So said their parents; so their teachers reported when the two girls were found down at the estuary during a school excursion, whispering to something scaly wriggling in the reeds. 21 November 202421 November 2024 · Fiction Whack-a-mole Sheila Ngọc Phạm We sit in silence a few more moments as there is no need to talk further; it is the right place to end. There is more I want to know but we had revisited enough of the horror for one day. As I stood up to thank Bác Dzũng for sharing his story, I wished I could tell him how I finally understood that Father’s prophecy would never be fulfilled.