All of this shrouded and trapped under a stagnant blue-grey cloud of smog. This is what I see as the aircraft begins its descent towards Zia International Airport. The woman next to me is furiously patting her chocolate-brown face with chalk-white powder as her husband tries to calm their small son. The little boy keeps trying to grab at his mother as she pulls one atrocity after another from her handbag to make herself presentable for the imminent reunion. She now slashes her lips with a deep maroon lipstick, the colour of clotted blood, and finishes off by slapping hot-pink blotches on her cheekbones. The aircraft makes a final swoop and the child begins to wail. As soon as the stewardess unlocks the cabin door a surge of heat brings with it a rush of smells: sweat, aerosol fumes, old leather and urine. As they hit my nostrils something in my gait changes involuntarily: a subtle shift in my posture, a familiar repositioning of the angle of my spine. I am readjusting, realigning, rearranging into my other self.
