Road Trip

We live in Butler, PA,

but New York is “back home.”

Each school break

with Gran Torino loaded

we sit three across

the tan back seat

with one holy, pillow-sized bag.

Orange cheese puffs

to ease the dull pain

of nothing to do.

The puffs don’t last

to Route 80.

I lead Cara and Christopher

bickering thorough the seven-hour

smelly disheveled road trip

on a bench seat that shrinks in increments

mile by mile.

Leather-seamed real estate lines

imagined centrifugal force

and the unscientific but powerful

counter-centrifugal force

has us flinging our bodies

back and forth into each other until

the Gran Torino

plunges through the bright tunnel

beneath the Hudson River.

We are

vacuum-packed in awe,

emerging to greet

the Manhattan skyline

blinking and winking

holding the unspoken wild promise of

everything.

The wind is knocked out of

our petty sibling clashes

as we float over the Brooklyn Bridge

breathless because

there she is,

standing tall and unmoving

like an illuminated hallucination

saying all are welcome

to New York.