This Side of the River

Samantha Jade Remigio

photo credit: Samantha Jade Remigio

My father, husband, and sister are considered essential workers. My father and sister work in the hospital a few towns over. He is sixty-three. She is twenty-seven. My husband works in a bank. He is thirty-one, although he still says he is thirty when asked his age.

Every day they leave home to face the world, and I stay home. I am not an essential worker. I should be more scared for them, I tell myself. They could bring the virus back home. My mother has asthma. But I don’t feel a thing. The world does not seem real to me anymore.

My husband makes us little espressos every day before he leaves. I sit at the dining room table and sip slowly, not wanting the moment to end. I ask, what does “essential” mean? 

I hover over my home, my parent’s home, this town, the river. I am detached from my typing fingers. Do we even matter? I look for signs and find none.

My father is not like most sixty-three year olds. He is big, sturdy, and healthy. He ran Spartan races after having back surgery. He is not scared of anything, I think. I always wanted to sit next to him on the big rides. The ones that made my heart jump into my throat. The ones that made me cry.

I could not see the blue angel jets from my bedroom window. Did they fly over this side of the river? My father was in the army. He was discharged long before I was ever born. I know nothing about that world.

My sister used to have seizures as a baby. She had a bad one once while we were in the back of the car. My parents ran into the hospital and forgot I was still in the car. My sister and I shared a room in the Grand Concourse, Riverside, and Haverstraw Place apartments. Long after the lights were turned off, I would lie there and listen for her breathing. I would sometimes get out of bed to put my finger under her nose. I didn’t want her to swallow her tongue in the middle of the night. We do not live together anymore. I moved out and got married years ago. But, late at night, I still listen.

The trees are standing in their dirt, silent. A rabbit has eaten the tulips in my front yard. A flock of sparrows play in the dipped concrete filled with rainwater. The sun refuses to show his face to us.

…

Samantha Jade Remigio grew up in New York City and now resides in the suburbs of New York. She loves reading, writing, and photographing candid moments. Her poetry has been previously featured in Obscura, The Literary and Arts Magazine of Lehman College. @librolion