Subletter’s Flight/Plight/Light

Anna Staropoli, United States

I mourn the seasons I’ll never know in place.

Boston no more, no less, than one temperature:

summer-sweet sweat of sprinklers on morning pavement,

sticky-stuck bus rides across the Charles,

the static of a city’s lure past stasis.

The neighborhoods blur together like the sun over skyscrapers

the afternoon of those two, July-jeweled gin and tonics.

Three sips turned us jesters at the Boston Public Library,

three p.m.’s generosity, two months before red

would color more than the Sox games this city breathes.

I never bought a ticket, though I saw the tip of Fenway

from that rooftop Fourth of July, hot dog buns limp

with that bottle of wine I dropped, red,

white glass, blue stains, patriotic incision.

We bought cheaper wine for our picnic-lunch dinners.

The esplanade is enticing only because it’s neutral,

green and alive with two views of two cities

I’ll never see cursed with the cast of transformation,

that moss-hammock-firework stretch to a blanket sheet of white

half this city will hate. For the other half, winter is styrofoam:

goblets of coffee taken on commutes,

the forgiving brush of cold on tired muscles,

three p.m.’s blustering monstrosity when the esplanade grows dark.

I’ll only know my lattes iced over, days sweltering and welcoming,

longevity’s realities as fantastical as a city that plays on loop,

re-living the same time and temperature,

moments and memories

until I tell it to stop,

until I come back,

and a new narrative, a real life, pitches into motion.

Anna Staropoli is a freelance writer and journalist. She studied English and geography at Dartmouth College and has been writing about her favorite places ever since.