By Lorena Osorio (Class 2021)

Photos by Lorena Osorio

put out

I.

the car took a shortcut on the way back.

that route was where we used to take walks

and talk about proms and your coworkers or how

you dreamt about the trains that ran upside down.

the stories were long and the walks much longer

but now we whizzed past, streetlights blending

into each other and humming the same way

they did when i took the wrong train home–

II.

the lights told me you’d be here today.

a million bulbs, wound around the palm trees

and you said isn’t it funny how the lights seem to

shine more when there are tears in your eyes?

but there were none in mine, and so the question

hung in the air before the dusk snatched it like

the final weeks slid and tumbled into days of

just white noise, but of course you saw it coming–

III.

–the strange thing about the drive by these roads

was not that it took five minutes; not even that

it didn’t stop or slow down as we ran past

all those glittering buildings, crosswalks, trees

but the fact i almost expected it to. but then

i guess time takes no orders from black holes

or broken resolves…. the wind blows and we flicker

and burn our last. there is nothing left to say.

unpaved (almost-somonka #1)

tell me where the road

changed from blacktop to just soil

sloping to where lamps

merge into distant stars and

stubborn unknowable sky

perhaps as stubborn

as us — stay put, stay quiet

before we get lost! —

but i was laughing aloud

and you were skipping–