It's almost Spring, and I'm weary of this loneliness
now,     with birds in the morning,              who I can pretend have always sounded this way. 

But sitting here in Grand Central, with my duffle and a burger, 
drenched in half-night and city air,
I want to tell you how much Camryn loves Shake Shack.
I want to tell you about my grandfather’s tractor and the rain.
I want a mouthful of vinegar, salt, and all the things I can't have. 

Instead, in front of me: a little girl in her stroller, 
whose parents haven't noticed the trail of crayons behind them. 

She tosses the blue one, waiting
that little eternity, some three or so steps, 
to crane her pink hooded head back over her pink shrouded shoulder, 
white knuckled and confused. 

Sometimes disaster is just this—  our own small hands, 
who know not of their desires.

Published August 10, 2025

MaKenzie Jean Copp teaches at Purchase College, SUNY. She is originally from Maine, where she received a dual BA in English and Writing/Publishing from Saint Joseph’s College of Maine. She received her MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College, where she concentrated in poetry. She was nominated for Best of the Net in 2021, and her work can be found in Pigeon Pages and Assisi: An Online Journal of Arts and Letters.

Christina Quarles (born 1985) is a queer, mixed contemporary American artist and writer, living and working in Los Angeles, whose gestural, abstract paintings confront themes of racial and sexual identities, gender, and queerness. She is considered at the forefront of a generation of millennial artists and her works shatter the societal manners of physical classification.