The Wild

Our bus is stuck in traffic

and I’m late for lunch with my grandpa

because his silence makes me feel a little bit less lonely

in a world where it's easier to forget 

the deaths of old friends, the day’s list of tragedies.

I know he longs for fiction--

his home, by the bay, indestructible. 

I once ran with innocence through the halls of his apartment,

but I no longer have that lens of childhood sweetness 

or his escape from reality.

New York’s too cold tonight.  

I shiver in the loss of naïveté.

The bus lurches forward

in the city where its possible to be enveloped in the heat 

of hundreds of apartment lights and still feel a chill

tremble through your heart. 

They want me to be myself like a shark might be herself in a city aquarium. 

Motionless, encumbered by the glass. 

I pretend like I’m told. 

I am the only passenger left,

waiting to wade in the tide of unknown, 

undulate alongs the waves of my intuition,

and send ripples through the status quo, 

but I am impatient. 

It is now nighttime and for a fleeting moment 

the chaos of the pandemic blurs into stillness. 

I tell the driver what is beneath my kaleidoscopic eyes, 

my truth fading into the endless cries of taxis

and the wispy gray strands of smoke rising from concrete. 

Whether or not the driver listened, 

I entered The Wild, glass shattered.