Everything’s For Sale
I sit in a shuttle leaving a beach clean up project in Toa Baja proud of my two hour philanthropy. Sweat and sand drenched, still pale skin scratched red, I sit in the window seat of a hotel shuttle looking out. The island of my mother that couldn’t keep me. The island of the grandparents that never wanted me. The beautiful island I adore, Puerto Rico. I sit looking outside.
Many of my friends are checking statuses and updates, emails, work, or sleeping. I needed to look outside. I wanted to see what non-hotel-Puerto Rico looked like. In a quiet shuttle we sweep by neighborhoods filled with homes, schools, businesses, stadiums, but no people. I see a sign that reads “Jehovah's Promise”, but no one to receive that promise. Signs that sold things, but no one to sell them to. Everyone is gone. Everything is quiet. And, everything is for sale. “Se Vende”, “Se Renta”, and “Leasing Now” signs tattoo every other building like holiday decorations. But, we do not celebrate anything. We only mourn.
Buildings are water torn, paint crackles like abuela’s chicharron, and metal gates, fixtures, and wires rust from American amnesia. Maybe they only exist because I’m looking at them right now. Maybe this is an illusion. Maybe, just maybe, they were never here. But, alas, here it is. The forgotten neighborhood that sits in the middle of an island in the middle of the ocean that, at noon time Friday, should be filled with families, vendors, children playing, people walking around, people outside of porches, people in schools, people kissing each other, people doing things, people being ------- people.
I stare outside a tinted window in a fancy hotel shuttle looking for people. Looking for existence. Looking for the lore and fanfare of Puerto Rico, but can only see the ghost of rooftops, trees where trees should not be, abandoned flags, and the remnants of things, but as the shuttle hurries home the black, white, and orange signs that hug broken paint billboard an island pledging to rebuild itself. All I see is this...and a few men in streets and on the backs of trucks looking for something to do with their day because everyone is gone. Everything is quiet. And, everything is for sale.