Two Rideshare Passengers

Just the Second

Unmasked,

Picked up at the Amtrak station,

I just came up from NYC to visit my mother,

She’s 94 in assisted living,

I was with her sister in Chelsea who’s 95,

On the phone with her brother, I can get an aide to come but we have to pay their ride fare,

Hopefully they don’t use it for themselves too, right,

Oh, thank you for wearing a mask, are you sick
That’s good, protecting yourself and loved ones

Coughs, pulls shirt collar over their face,

Love the weather here lately, so unseasonably warm,

Dropping off at mother’s building,

Oh I love your Standing Rock shirt,

I held up a sign on Nantucket when VP Biden was there for Christmas saying Leave Dakota Alone,

And he didn’t shrug me off, he listened,

But I’m no hero,

He’s doing so great now.

But the First

Unmasked,

Picked up on Tuesday at 1 AM,

Lies about drinking, about their empty beer bottle, how they don’t want to litter,

(my first mistake),

Hear them take sips and they say they’re cleaning my teeth,

Interesting that you have a mask on,

(his curiosity is an antagonistic pretense),

In my town no one wore a mask,

I had it twelve times, I had it two weeks ago,

(I think reflexively about an ableist insult hanging in retort over his cognitive decline),

Turn up the fucking music if you won’t have a conversation,

(I play jazz and lofi to usually neutralizing effect for all my passengers),

You’re so weak, you’re a coward,

Move to the city, you can’t survive out here with real people who work,

(this is in a bedroom community for the insurance industry, bucko),

Call your dad so I can tell him what a fucking coward you are,

(he died when I was six; how can I weaponize my tragedy against this man),

I won’t get out of the car, you can’t make me,

This will go very bad for you
I’m so much bigger than you

(but you’re not bigger than me, I just slouch a lot as I think about grasping for the heavy steel of the vise grip wrench in my door pocket),

Yeah sure call the cops, I will too, I feel so unsafe with you,

I will make it my life’s work to make sure you never drive again,

(I want to report to him months later that, though I continue to drive with not a blemish on my record, he haunts my car every day, the fuckhead specter that he is),

You are so pathetic, this is a fucking joke,

Throws bottle out the window before police arrive,

Yells to police about how unsafe and confused they feel,

(his tone has completely changed—a bootlicker’s tongue, no doubt—but we all rightly judge him instead on the content of his rant),

Yeah, I want to go, get me away from here,

(I drive another five hours that night to burn the adrenaline off, stopping at 6AM for a bunch of emotionally-numbing snacks to fill my bed with crumbs and youtube comedy videos all the next day).