Portrait, Terminal 1, LAS

Golden sun on the high white girders, sunrise reflecting off the planes lurking at the gates outside.

The same useless gear - t-shirts with winking slogans, shot glasses covered in facsimiles of playing cards, casino branded boxes of chocolates - at dozens of differently named, but otherwise identical, stores.

Four Starbucks, at least (let’s go to the good one - no not that one, the other one).

Slot machines burbling their electronic come-ons at every gate, promising endless distraction, perhaps a payday, while the sun comes up over the desert, out where the silence lives.