maphem

emma burden | Spring 2022

It’s a lost copy of a publication, 
Drifting through the hands of those in apartment 4K,
A pink airsoft gun beneath a couch, and,
A forgotten glass pipe

I wore a jacket that was too long on me, dripping off my skin and melting to the floor,
I stepped over a bullet getting off the train.
My nails were painted white and appeared to be pink, my hands washed from color in the cold
And they took me to the deli on the corner of W 111th and Fredrick Douglass,
Where I bought a sparking water that we never shared

Because I was so wrapped up in the fact that we were all together, the three of us and some change,
That I’ve never not felt safe on the same strip of street that I’ve been catcalled, that I’ve been threatened in the daylight,
Her apartment is worth a million dollars

She smoked Parliament cigarettes, and I forgot to bum a few
I’ve only smoked four cigarettes in my life, one being a tar-stained Newport
My friends are all older than I am, leaving college in the early days of summer,
And I wonder if they’ll still visit the city
Or if they’ll move on and get their master’s degrees

I met my best friend when I was twelve years old,
I think that she was fifteen
Against the barrier of a computer screen and an hour time difference, South America being so far from Tennessee.
And she goes to college upstate, her mom lives in Queens
And now that I’m eighteen, I see her every week

I wish that I were older and that Central Park North didn’t scare me,
That I wouldn’t spend $20 on an Uber at midnight to go back to my twin xl,
That I could sit on the C train, Brooklyn bound, and stay there all night
I would sleep on the train and wake up in a yard, ready to find my way home
And home would be an apartment on Cathedral Parkway

Because all my friends live uptown, uptown being Harlem, Washington Heights, … upstate,
And I guess I live uptown too, 
Even though I’m hardly out of Hell’s Kitchen
If I were older I’d live with them, I’d take care of their dog and I’d pay for the cable subscription
But if I were older, I’d never get to experience this, being the one young, cool person that they let into their apartment

Their house upstate qualifies as my summer home
I can’t even stay in New York past May 17th.