Ode to the Memories I’ve Made in Boston

Some days I want to decay. Rot away in bed
until my sheets are littered with dead skin cells

and strands of unwashed hair. My memories
could fill up hundreds of rolls of film, and I’m afraid

of the day I’ll forget them. Every year that goes
by, I lose a reel. In ten years, I won’t remember

the Bostonian singing Phoebe Bridgers in the park
across my junior dorm. How she whittled someone

else’s sadness down to a chord progression. Days before,
me in the backseat of an Uber, trying to act sober

after two margaritas and two shots of tequila. Failing,
then telling my ex-lover how much I miss my dead friend.

How she would’ve loved the city if she had lived long enough
to visit. If her ex-boyfriend didn’t stab her on that July morning

three years ago. Didn’t leave her lying on the concrete
of the abandoned train station parking lot to bleed and bleed

and bleed in that deadly heat. In eight years, I won’t remember
abandoning a Halloween party with my roommate five minutes

after arriving. How we couldn’t find any alcohol in the house,
just empty bottles of Chardonnay and cigarette butts. We went

back to our dorm, ordered pizza and vegan cheesy bread, watched
The Great Pumpkin instead. In six years, I won’t remember

walking through a New England blizzard with my partner
to the nearest Dunkin Donuts. Wind whipping against our faces,

hail hammering onto our winter coats, just for a cup of matcha.
My tongue turning the color of August, the month I met her. Boston,

I’m sorry I resented you for so long. All this time, you were just
trying to understand the loneliness within me without unraveling it.

*

Annalisa Hansford (they/them) studies Creative Writing at Emerson College. Their poetry appears or is forthcoming in The West Review, The Lumiere Review, and Heavy Feather Review. They are the co-editor-in-chief of hand picked poetry, a poetry editor for The Emerson Review and Hominum Journal, and a reader for Sundress Publications.