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bleecker & crosby

Louise Kim

i’m back at cafe lyria, without you, you-less. already

i have made a number of double-takes, finding

your familiarity in someone’s hair, in someone’s laugh.

i remember how i retraced your footsteps, ran around

manhattan trying to pick up your hints, shards, shadows,

spare change, bread crumbs on a path that i now know

goes nowhere—and it has been three months since, torturous

and beautiful. the great city greets me—newly christened

and not by you, as you had imagined. against my will,

i imagine you. because i care——but i am happy, here,

alone, with my freddo cappuccino. they’re playing the smiths

on the speakers, so this is a piece of my city now.

my new life is so new. you look good in my past.

i only look forward. and i can finally write poems again.




Louise Kim is an undergraduate student at Harvard University. Their Pushcart Prize- and Best of the Net-nominated writing has been published in a number of publications, including Frontier Poetry, Chautauqua Journal, and Panoply Zine. Her debut poetry collection, Wonder is the Word, was published in May 2023.

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