A glint of something reminded me
of that time I flew across the Atlantic.
From the nothing London and Paris were shiny again.
Faces of the past stopped me at the corner to chit chat.
En route from JFK to La Guardia I ate an $8 sandwich
alone in Times Square; the flashmedia walls
weren’t the canyon lips I had imagined since childhood.
The ball-drop-and-bustle crowds in hoodies and mittens
were exotic like Tokyo; the dinge near Queensboro Bridge
wasn’t the country I was taught to unquestionably love.
Santo Domingo was closer to home somehow,
despite the delayed connections and blackness
and broken street lights that blotted out shanty towns.
When I arrived to the hotel she had reserved online
her hair’s flaming crimson in the Caribbean 4:ooam
was a shelter from myself. Her half-asleep pajama smile
was enough, in that doorway, at that senseless humid hour.
I tucked this clarity and my jet lag body into bed
parallel her warmth because opposites attract
but it was both too late and too early to touch.
At a dusty intersection a motorboy drove us
past villages and plantations to a secluded beach.
His name was Vin, and he was pushing thirteen
the hard way. She laughed comments into my ear;
the dirt road was a rust red lighter than her hair
that shot up with sharp turns, tickling my sweaty face.
Watching the turquoise waves, I imagined the Santa Maria.
We drank from coconuts, slipped sand through fingers,
then Vin bobbed us back up the hilly palm-lined roads,
our sundown return guaranteed by the 60% withheld.
I can’t place why these memories arrived today.
I’m not certain of any of this anymore, just images.
But it’s coming back—his bike was black and chromed.
She flirted with Vin by pressing breasts into his back
as barefoot girls in white dresses returned from school.
Vin—or Ace or Juan—was smarter than I: hands to himself.
Probably he still rides that sun-swept Eden of unpaved hills
stopping at wooden roadside tables to buy gas from neighbors
while I jumble the luxuries of where I was with whom and why.
LOCATION: Florianopolis, Brazil – Written about a trip to the Dominican Republic with Meagan after returning from London, Paris, and Brussels on a business trip.
