Long Island City isn’t really in Long Island
and the East River is technically a tidal strait
and our date was actually more of a stroll
through my neighborhood, the last night of August,
our first night together in Queens. The Manhattanite,
shocked by how far his city extends into not quite
.

city, into a place where, People
don’t just exist, he calculates,
People make lives here.
.

There were two kinds of silence that night:
the first, standing together, both of us
staring across a river in the same direction,
.

then, the second, when I realize he is staring
at the skyline, searching for the outline of the apartment
where he tried to make a life with her, and suddenly
.

I’m alone on the bridge.
.

Do you want to swim across? I pout.
No, he reaches for my hand,  No, I don’t.

 

 

 

Kait Burrier writes poetry, drama, journalism, and to-do lists in New York City. Her work appears online and in print, most recently in Everyday Escape Poems, an anthology by SwanDive Publishing Company. Visit www.kaitburrier.com to see what she’s up to next.