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.