spring – Safia Elhillo

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?