Olivia told me she was feeling sad about graduating and very nostalgic. She wanted a poem to encapsulate the feeling of wanting to go back to school and accept all of what happened. The word she chose was “fridge/refrigerator.”

For: Olivia Loaiza

Those Thursdays, kaleidoscope vision
Telling stories to every version of you I see
Backlit and glowing against these peeling walls
Girl, we hand built this stage to slink across,
loyal audience cued for raucous applause, 
collected roses on the end of a good night
No one taught us how to cast a glance, but eyes meet
and like magic, I know, we were some sisters in a past life
Bloodlines elastic, met here again, calling you “bitch” out of celebration cuz
we are free to wear our sharpness like warm fur, in this timeline
Put sincerity on ice, becoming fridge leftovers like the rest
Feeling fuzzy, tucked “I’ll miss this,” into our back pockets,
moments we promise to stitch together in the lucid morning
This labor of love; trying to thread us back together from memory,
for the mornings to come

From: Maya