Tonight,
        Atlanta decided

        _nobody_

        needed to leave.

The biggest thunderstorm
    I’ve seen since I got here
    kept folding itself

    over the city.

I had already dropped Ava
           at the airport…

  the sky had other plans.

She was still on the ground,
        waiting for Atlanta
                to remember
    what airplanes were for.

Back at Irby’s,
     Coal and Orca had crashed
     on opposite sides
     of the same water bowl,

     red and green leashes
     running across the patio,

     both apparently exhausted
     from filing two completely different
     reports on the same weekend.

Meanwhile,
          I was emotional chaos,
          which looked _much_ less impressive
                             from the outside.

Mostly,
       it looked like one man
       sitting very still

       between two sleeping dogs.

Tonight,
        my whole job
        was knowing where everyone was:

       Ava still at the airport,
          Mari still in Chicago,
            Coal and Orca asleep at my feet,

            and me,
            exactly where two leashes had left me.

That was ground crew work:
              no altitude,
            no clean view
        above the weather.

Just keeping everybody accounted for
            while the sky made noise
             and the heart made more.

While the storm kept going
      and the man kept talking,
          the dogs didn’t move,
   so I gathered the red leash
             and the green one
              around one wrist

             and let _that_ be

             the one part of tonight

                  I knew how to hold.