Everybody seems enraptured by liminal spaces now. One of my favorites used to be the airport, until I died there. It seems too on-the-nose to face life and death somewhere people arrive and depart in waves, significant and mundane. Between vacation and work, between home and away, between here and there, solitary and together. The airport where my body was abandoned on a tarmac near the B Gates came pre-shrouded in conspiracy theories stemming from a haunted horse sculpture with glowing eyes, allegedly holding the soul of the artist who perished due to its construction. There are said to be secret passageways to hell in the depths of the structure, meters beneath sixteen dollar mimosas and pain and joy and reunion and disappearance. I never pictured myself as someone who might be left for dead, which was cocky of me, or perhaps an attempt to reverse my self importance and soothe the part of me that is convinced I will meet a tragic, dramatic demise. I suppose the airport seemed like a safer place than a remote gas station in the middle of the night, or a bar full of strangers, or the drug store teeming with ghosts in my hometown. It is easy to feel stupid after you die, waking up screaming with a sternum that feels shattered and sticky, persistent electrodes stuck in places you can hardly reach because you're alone back in the airport bathroom after being kicked out of the hospital. The nurse asked my wife over the phone while I was unconscious post-revival if "this happens a lot". I wasn't prepared for purgatory to be ridiculous. I died, and the angel sent to rescue me is still calling to collect for my ambulance ride I wasn't conscious for and the life-saving care I couldn't request while my body decided if I was sticking around. I used my hospital bracelet as ID to get through security and board a new flight, since I lost my driver's license during my death march. My reaper had a brilliant smile, it was truly a surprise to end up forgotten so violently. I had ratatouille toast and fries as my last meal, a combination I will never so much as smell again; nothing turns my stomach more than remembering I used to be somebody else. To lose hours and heartbeats and fight back through is more effort than I prefer to put into getting from point A to B. I wish I knew who found me, so I could pour sand into some of the cracks in my memory and pretend I'm whole again. I wish I knew what would make someone with kind eyes leave a stranger drenched in their own sickness all alone, cold, barely breathing. Sometimes I picture my body lying crumpled next to an airplane, but I can't get the scale right in my mind. Nothing offends me more than having the opportunity to perceive myself taken away from me so callously; that reaper could have taken a photo for me to admire once I was back on earth, just to see how small I am, how much more I can still shrink. I don't hate every airport now, just that one, mostly the B Gates, mostly the French restaurant I fast-walk past, or the bathroom where I fell to the floor and emptied my insides as people stepped around me, annoyed, because they had places to be and I was stuck. I'm stuck there forever, and it's a boring place to occupy. I wish I died in a movie theater, maybe.