October 6, 2020

joyride **

We were 14 and 15 when my sister and I, set briefly on land midway through 
a Carnival cruise to Puerto Vallarta, joined two older boys on the backs 
of their mopeds to a beach, they said, the tourists didn’t know about. Our grandfather,
chaperone for the week-long trip, had left our sights, and so we’d agreed to leave his,
and here we were, reveling on pristine sand, miles from anyone, awash in a delicious,
shared freedom that smelled of coconut and held the sheen of bright copper coins. 
The boys returned us, as promised, and we clamored back on board safe, as they say, 
as houses. This is the memory that returns to me as I watch, on replay, a man waving 
from a moving car, in the midst of his own joyride, maybe, were it not for how thick 
the windows are and how maniacally his arms are moving, and how empty his eyes look.

** This poem is a response to Donald Trump’s motorcade around Walter Reed National Military Medical Center during his hospitalization following his COVID-19 diagnosis.