Debra Marquart, a winner of Narrative’s 2025 Winter Story Contest, is the author of eight books, including the memoir The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere, the essay collection The Night We Landed on the Moon, and the poetry book Gratitude with Dogs under Stars. She directs the MFA program in creative writing and environment at Iowa State University and teaches in the Stonecoast Low-Residency MFA Program at University of Southern Maine. In addition, Marquart is a singer/songwriter, performing with her jazz-poetry rhythm-and-blues project, the Bone People.

Couples Traveling

by Debra Marquart

Worse than traveling alone is to be stranded in security
behind couples, especially old traveling couples, now jacket-

and vestless as they fuss shoeless in stocking feet, turn belts,
wallets in their hands as if newly invented things. Torture


to wait by the conveyor, watch the wife pair and unpair
their shoes, zip and unzip her carry-on, which she wanted
People on couch
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