'The Night Before Driving Back from a Camping Holiday, Mid-August 1977' by Sherry Morris

I’m refusing to sing along when the radio interrupts:
The King has died on his Graceland throne. You pull the car over. Your hands grip the steering wheel so tight your knuckles go white. You rock and sob down sorrow.
Mom’s fine. She’s always been a Barry Manilow fan.

Around the campfire you’d curled your lip, shook your hips.
Me and the crowd clapped and cheered for more.
Later, I spot you through a window.
In a camper that’s not ours. With a woman who isn’t Mom.
It’s a different, though somehow similar, performance.
That’s really when the King died.