Dancing in the Airport

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.” 
— Friedrich Nietzsche

I saw someone

In the airport. 

Wavy dark hair cropped just above their shoulders, their skin

a golden shade of brown.

They dance through the shops,

to music blasting in their headphones, music

only they can hear.

Their scarf —

Red with gold stripes, 

Gryffindor —

Their scarf is thrown around

their neck and dances with them.

They stop, suddenly,

in front of a bookshelf.

The genre-fiction paperbacks,

mysteries and romances,

the sappy stuff to get you through a flight.

They inspect the volumes like they’ve stumbled

upon a literary oasis.

As they dance away, I remember a quote

by some philosopher.

Something about dancing

And those who couldn’t hear the music.

The philosopher,

as a quick google search later tells me,

was a man named

Friedrich Nietzsche.

He was a nihilist, I learn.

To me that word brings to mind 

the bad guys in The Big Lebowski,

And the idea that life

is pointless. That there is no meaning.

But Nietzsche seemed to disagree.

When reading through his quotes,

greater than this idea of

”nothingness,” I see

that he loved to dance.

He did not believe there was no meaning,

as his meaning was music.

I think of that person again,

dancing in the airport.

Their music,

that no one else could hear.

I wonder what everyone thought when they saw them.

“I don’t think you insane,”

I want to tell them.

“I hear it too.

I hear the music too.”

My dad walks in and finds me on the floor,

by the fire,

scrolling on my phone through 

Goodreads quotes by a German nihilist.

I tell him who I’m reading about,

and he tells me Nietzsche 

was one of Hitler’s inspirations.

And I put my phone away.