One Last Ride
The highway hums beneath us,
a silver ribbon unspooling, stretching time,
five hours folding into salt and horizon.
She sits beside me in the old Chrysler—
the Town & Country, once dignified,
now a relic of polish fading into nostalgia.
The wood paneling still whispers of its golden years,
though the lacquer has surrendered in places,
dulled like the memory of Miami Dolphins victories,
of stadium crowds she can no longer stand among.
She glances at my brother, now wedged in the middle seat,
his shoulders stiff, hands curled around his diecast Corvette—
as if the metal chassis might ground him
while history repeats in voices above his head.
And then there was us—
my older brother championing revolution, fire in his voice,
me standing firm on the slow burn of policy,
protest versus legislation, force against persuasion.
He spoke of upheaval, of torches in the streets,
of movements that scorched their way into history,
citing rebellions that shattered regimes,
the necessity of chaos to unmake oppression.
I countered with the patience of paper,
the ink of deliberation, the weight of slow reform,
the belief that change, to last,
must be built from within, brick by brick,
not wrested in the fever of a single night.
My sister, debating feminism with me,
weaving tales of male privilege into animated kingdoms—
deconstructing Beauty and the Beast,
challenging the politics of princesses.
I fired back with counterpoints
built on Disney’s quiet revolutions,
quoting Ariel's defiance, Mulan’s resilience,
arguing the incremental shift—
that fairytales were learning,
however imperfectly, to unmake their past.
She scoffed, naming the villains still drawn too charming,
the heroines still shaped too gently.
And between us, my younger brother sat,
rolling his toy wheels across his thigh,
waiting for us to grow bored of history,
to let silence settle in
like dust in the seams of a worn-out car.
My mother sighs, brushing a hand across the dashboard,
the way she once smoothed the wood veneer
on our old living room console,
fingers ghosting over the static
before the game crackled into motion.
The 1972 Dolphins—perfect in record,
immortal in memory.
She remembers how we all crowded around that screen,
stepdad balancing a plate of nachos and salsa,
her own voice sharp with joy
when Kiick took it in for the score.
I can almost hear her say it now—
“They never did it again, but once was enough.”
And I wonder if she means football,
or life itself.
The hotel room exists between versions of itself,
half-modern, half-forgotten—
maroon carpet fraying at the corners,
a sleek lamp that doesn’t match the floral wallpaper,
a desk too new for its wobbly chair.
Even the light flickers like it can’t decide
if it belongs in this decade or the last.
It is a room in limbo, much like us.
She settles into the bed,
the pillows stacked carefully beneath her spine,
the weight of the drive melting into crisp sheets.
On the TV, The Best Years of Our Lives flickers—
Frederic March raising his glass,
Harold Russell tracing the contours of a future
without the hands he once knew.
She sighs when Homer tries to hold Wilma,
the way his body betrays him,
the way she stays, unflinching.
The scene quiets something deep in her—
the knowing that loss cannot be outrun,
only softened by those who refuse to look away.
My sister calls from Alaska,
says the northern lights flared last night,
green ribbons curling like seaweed in sky.
She asks if I can send pictures of anything
her daughter might sketch—
a streetlamp bending against the wind,
the way light fractures through a rain-streaked window.
Then, her voice shifts, careful now, measured—
she speaks of the future, of what is fair,
what is owed, what might be promised
when the weight of care no longer rests
in my mother’s hands.
What will be reimbursable,
what should belong to whom,
what it means to inherit responsibility
instead of just the things left behind.
And always, beneath the calculations,
my brother—
who will watch over him,
who will decide the shape of his world
when the one who knows him best
is gone.
My brother in Oregon speaks of rivers,
his voice full of exact false cheer,
the kind meant to mask a quiet weariness.
He talks about cold hands gripping a fishing rod,
of waiting for something unseen
to take the bait,
of how trout move like ghosts beneath the surface.
And beneath his words, another thought lingers—
his wife, frail as she is,
how she will need tending,
how responsibility never truly passes,
only shifts shape,
only finds new hands to hold it.
And then there is the shape of what’s to come—
the joy and the breaking of it, the laughter and its echo.
A wedding, the shimmer of promise,
then papers signed in quiet rooms,
the weight of goodbye settling into drawers.
A body betraying itself, the stark syllables of diagnosis,
the fight, the frailty, the waiting, the return—
cancer like a storm that bruises the bones,
then fades into remission,
leaving only the knowledge
that not all things come back untouched.
The love of my brother, steady as the road beneath us,
the joy of tending, the ache of duty,
the fear of expectations unfolding
in silent negotiations I do not yet understand.
And then maybe a tornado,
ripping through the known world,
splitting the timbers of a home
that once stood unwavering.
But a new house will rise,
new walls will carry voices,
new foundations will hold weight—
my brother, my wife, my dog,
a life remade in the wind’s aftermath,
a future stitched from everything that came before.
And my mother—
she watches my younger brother
the way a lighthouse watches the dark,
aware of the storms ahead,
of the care I must carry
when she no longer can.
She hums the Dolphins’ fight song softly before bed,
a hymn to all that lingers, to all that fades.
Then, almost without thinking,
her voice shifts, slipping into Belafonte,
A Hole in the Bucket, the rhythm of trying, of mending,
of things that will never quite be whole.
Then Day-O, a call to the dawn,
a melody of labor and waiting,
the night giving way to the light
that does not always come.
She came from thirteen—
six brothers, seven sisters,
her name the last written on the family roll call,
though not the last to leave.
She will be the middle one to go,
just after the final brother,
after the first three sisters,
her place in the lineage somewhere between memory
and the spaces left behind.
And I wonder—
when the tide turns,
when the wind shifts,
who will sing it for her?