The Moon and New York City (or, “Somebody Still Loves You, Christopher Cross”)

Me and Shannon are sitting beside the road in an outdoor pupusa shop. I’ve got the dog on my lap, his nose is flaring at an enormous vat of hot beans, tiny bubbles erupting in puffs of steam as they boil and burst. There’s a bathroom in the back without a door, and the toilet doesn’t flush. Maybe his nose is flaring at that too.

An old radio on a shelf is playing 80s soft rock in mono. Rain peppers the corrugated metal roof. Darkness is rising, from where I don’t know. The radio softly hums. When you get caught between the moon and New York City, it sings to no one in particular. Except it’s singing particularly to me, because I’m listening. Does everything that happens in this world happen for you, if you’re there watching and listening and feeling with open eyes and open heart? I know it’s crazy but it’s true.

Farewell at the airport. The dog feels no emotion, nor do Shannon’s pants (Comalapa, El Salvador; Jun 2022)

Savannah is 19 years old, we left her at a little airport along the road that fronts this pupusa shop. Leave the pupusa shop and go left, you’ll hit the airport eventually. When they finish cooking our pupusas, we’ll leave and go right. This is profoundly sad.

Come back soon, Susu. (Alexandria, VA; Dec 2014)

I think of Savannah in an airplane, high above the sea of rain overhead, arcing beneath the universe, or through it, I don’t know for sure. She’ll be in Manhattan by morning. Tonight, I realize wistfully, she’s caught between the moon and New York City.

Shannon leans against me because she’s cold. The rain is insistent, the dog growls at a passing stray, the lady with dark hair and a thin face slaps our pupusas down on the stove with a spatula, the radio never goes anywhere but can still somehow take you to New York.

Normal is extraordinary sometimes. (Mindo, Ecuador; May 2022)

I see Shannon out of the corner of my eye, she’s just wearing normal clothes, the veins inside her temples are familiar. Her hair falls ordinary over her little shoulders that have carried a wedding dress, cradled Savannah’s little baby head, marched ramrod straight through deserts and storms, hefted this whole world some days. She’s just a girl. She doesn’t know I’m watching.

Her eyes dance from raindrop to raindrop outside, those raindrops hurtling from a sky that swaddles our little girl as she wings northward somewhere out there. I unconsciously reach for Shannon’s seamstress hands and think how, sometimes, the best that you can do is fall in love.