This piece was first published in Quarto’s 2023 Spring Print Edition.
Illustration by Jorja Garcia
Yesterday we wandered through the cemetery
it wasn’t a metaphor it was just something to do.
It's not purgatory if the train passed through
though we stand in Northern windows
and we wonder. To ourselves, of course.
Well you wanted out of here (I had watched
this movie before, and heard the songs, for
that matter). So you wrote essays on the old
observatory and I offered flimsy lines about
history. When you kicked gravel I imagined
a thousand tiny spines scattering and when birds
cooed at our cereal silt sometimes I sang along.
If only to make my mom grin. If only to sound
more like her. If I stayed I would teach the
thrushes how to read. And I would be a waitress
with homemade earrings and I would learn
to laugh without a tongue. Yesterday we fought
over my driving – I’m awful with stoplights
and I want you to promise to come back. I dug
fingers in my grandma’s compost and screamed
when the worms wanted more than apple
cores. They’re coming for your heart, you said.
Later you bent on bedspread and your body
was a comma and you blew smoke towards
the window crack and I tucked birthday cards
from Cici in my underwear drawer. If I stayed
I would write books about bird feeders and
islands and find myself in the footnotes.
Phoebe Mulder (she/they) is a sophomore at Barnard studying History with a minor in Education. She enjoys ginger pigeons, coffee mugs with sentimental value, and over-analyzing lyrics on Genius. You can often find her hanging trash on her wall, insisting it’s a collage.