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 it's 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 along 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 strands of smoke rising from concrete. 
Whether or not he listened, 
I entered The Wild, glass shattered.