Passing Through New York
My driving knotted your stomach -
Jolting stops, abrupt starts,
Slashing through lanes
Without grace or graduality.
It was hard for you to be in the passenger’s seat,
But on that drive to Delaware for my family’s vacation,
Your eye rolls slid into my silly jokes
And found amusement,
And that reluctant grin
Broke into hammer thrusts of laughter
As the fatigue and monotony of the long drive
Tweaked us into
A mild and pleasant delirium.
We grew that day because you learned
To unclutch your fingers from the wheel.
To hunker down in the uncomfortable
Spontaneity of reacting,
Rather than being reacted to.
For once, you were the child dodging raindrops,
Rather than the Sky Man imparting them.
Passing through the madness of New York City,
I teased, You’re just gonna have to brace yourself
And suck it up.
On a different day, that might have been taken sourly,
Leading to a long ride of interpreting silence.
But on this day, you smirked and said,
Oh God, and we squealed and gasped
And giggled our way through cracked pavement
And graffiti-laced Jersey barriers
And deadline-obsessed men
In black Cadillacs swerving in front of us,
Daring me not to press on the brakes.
***
We drove back overnight,
Following a chorus of tears
From my five-year old niece.
She always cried when having to leave
Her Mimi or Titi, but had never
Shown that kind of emotion
In my departure.
Fleeting and isolated as it may have been,
It drew me to tears once we started driving.
You put on my favorite song at the time
To cheer me up, a song you yourself didn’t like,
And asked me to rap Eminem’s verse -
An exercise I knew you had no
Interest in actually witnessing.
I’ll learn the other verse so we
Can rap it together in the car, you said.
Somehow, that miniature act of sacrifice -
Welcoming one of my dorky quirks
To sweeten this small sadness -
Pushed me even further into my meltdown.
I rapped the verse and you played the song again.
After the third time, you teased,
Okay, I think we’ve had enough of that.
My love for you in those few minutes
Was so palpable that it seemed
Nearly tangible - a fragrance so keen,
So close, that it seems to take on shape,
Form, even sound; an emotion so potent
And magisterial
That the concept of art itself
Suddenly becomes self-evident in
Its yearning to put form to feeling.
A couple hours later, the skyline of New York -
Beaming in its girth, its domineering resolve -
Appeared as an announcement of
Majesti conquest over the horizon line.
Columns of lights dazzled the
Sprawling cluster of towers.
In an instant of courage, I said,
I told my mom you were the one yesterday.
That I just felt this certainty I’d never felt before.
Chuckling, I added, She cried, of course.
I looked over to find your head
Tilted towards the passenger window,
Mouth hanging open in
Exhausted oblivion.
Don’t we always seem to lose touch
Just when the moment strikes?
I laughed under my breath.
The stern geometries of the skyline
Slid into the backdrop of our journey.
I peaked at the rear view
Until I lost sight of it entirely.
The city, though, I supposed,
Would continue to marvel in
Its colossal grandiose,
With or without our acknowledgement.
I glanced back at your face,
Adorably awkward in its dream-dropped stupor,
Yet all the more angelic in its humanity.
No less dazzling or majestic, now,
Though I’d have died at the thought
That I might be merely passing through.
Posted Oct 2, 2022, 10:48 PM UTC