Safia Elhillo

spring

it’s late now, it’s early, no way to know which season it is of the total years of my life, weren’t we only just nineteen, tonya & i, wasn’t she only just alive, long-limbed & cross-legged on my dorm room floor, wasn’t it springtime of a year so unlike this one, thirteen years past, cool nights in line outside the nuyorican hoping to make it on the list, wasn’t it a friday night like this one & the only people i wanted to love were poets, earrings swaying against their necks, dancing in the dark of the room where we all knew each other’s secrets, weren’t we all just at that party, wasn’t i only just eighteen, pointed northward on a chinatown bus to that city, to watch ai elo onstage at the apollo, wasn’t she only just alive, smoking with camonghne, asking me my favorite song, cackling on the apartment floor, on the air mattress we used as a couch, how is it that it was long ago, how is it i am on the other side of it,long ago, how did i leave that city, that time when we were all together, everyone alive, wasn’t the dream to be a poet, wasn’t the plan to live forever, our powers newly acquired, newly in love with what we could do, didn’t we all belong to each other, to that work, going after to the pizza shop to recite what we’d memorized, weren’t we all just there, wasn’t it warm outside, wasn’t the road long & clear, isn’t it early still, isn’t it late, & why am i still here, did i survive or was i left behind, & what season is it that we are no longer together & some of us have gone?