I was a teenage runaway

When I was 15 I ran away from home.
It was 1987.
It was the day after Martin Luther King Day, and there was a blizzard approaching.
I had saved around $250 in cash gifts from a recent birthday party.
My plan was to get to Florida, because it was warm there.
From there I would somehow get to Jamaica, and join a reggae band.
If I didn’t get that far, then I’d join a rock band.
It made sense to my 15 year-old mind.
I went to Penn Station, and took a train to Miami.
It was a 26 hour ride, giving me ample time to think and draw.
Long train rides have a way of inducing reflection in its passengers.
I was convinced I was doing the right thing.
Once I arrived in Miami, late at night, I realized that the train station was nowhere near the center of the city.
How would I get there?
I took a taxi, but had very little money to pay for the fare.
I told the driver to take me to the nearest Salvation Army.
On the ride we spoke, and he figured out that I was a runaway.
Instead he took me to a police station.
At the station, a policeman called my parents, and I spoke with them.
My mother’s voice was stoic, while my father sobbed on the phone.
I felt very sad by the pain I had caused them by leaving.
My parents flew me back home the next day, and the police took me to a runaway home for the remainder of the night.
The next morning, at breakfast I met the residents.
Girls and boys, lost, lonely, and hopeless.
I did some assigned chores, like the residents.
I spoke to a counselor.
I went to the airport, left Miami and arrived at LaGuardia.
My mother and uncle were there to receive me.
It was a quiet ride home.
At home, my room felt sterile, the police had gone through all my belongings.
They had read all my letters.
Everyone at school knew that I had run away.
The school had been scandalized; rumors abound for my reasons for leaving.
They never thought that it was because of them, because wanted to be someplace else.
I had earned the respect of some kids because I did what they only fantasized about.
I hated that place, I hated those people, and I still wanted to leave.
I felt a profound sense of sadness for my parents and myself.
I took the police officer’s advice, and waited to go to college.

Years later when asked by my siblings to recount this experience,
I can hear my father sobbing over the phone, and I weep.

Blue Monster

Little girl with golden hair, little girl not quite so fair
Cannot sleep like the others do, in the afternoon nap to protect from loo*
She crawls out of the bed to play, in the shade where she must stay
Away from the flood of sunlight at the gate, to avoid a deadly fate
Standing at the cusp of light and dark, she hears a stray dog’s wretched bark
No one on the street at all, then a figure dark and tall
He is blue with fearsome face; tusks, flaring nostrils, red eyes ablaze
Transfixed at him she stares, he looks back at her and glares
Paralyzed she stands at the verge of sun and shade, he turns his head and walks away
In the stark sunlight he disappears, she goes to bed out of fear
Creeping back into the darkness of the room, she wraps herself to her mother’s womb
His visage and gait ingrained in her mind, there he resides for her to find


*Hindi/Urdu- very strong hot afternoon winds that can cause heatstroke and death.

a foot

Today has been a fragile day.
I was crossing the street around 8:45 this morning, I was hit by a shiny red car.
The woman driving turned out to not be a woman, but a girl. A 19 year old girl.
She simply did not see me crossing the street, as she made a left turn.
She could not see past her self.

As I crossed the street, I could see that her vehicle was not slowing down for me.
I stepped back a bit, about a foot.
Still, I was hit by her car.
The passenger side of her shiny red car had hit the left side of me.
I felt my shoulder, arm, leg, and knee colliding with her car.
The collision was relatively minor.
I did not fall, perhaps I was spun a bit.
I was hurt and stunned.

I yelled at her, "Are you driving with your eyes closed?"
She stopped the car, got out, and apologetically answered "no".
She asked me if I was okay.
I wasn't sure.
She asked me what I was going to do.
I did not know.
Then, I asked for her name and phone number.
After some words, I said, "pay attention to your driving."
I wrote down her license plate number and left.

I did got to the hospital, and did the necessary paperwork to have a record of this incident.
At the hospital I was told that I was lucky.
I didn't feel lucky.
The girl was lucky.
The Con Edison truck driver was lucky.
I was not lucky.
I was hurt.

I laughed that though it was a minor accident, it sounded really bad.
I was hit by a car.
I was hit by a truck.

Today, I realized that one incident would warrant, "I am not lucky."
Two incidents, makes me very lucky.