It's impossible to say that one borough of New York City is exactly like another; each teems with it's own life,  it's own atmosphere. Poetry is about finding the beauty in the quotidian, and that's what Michael Waller does in "At Supper," capturing the spirit of a Queens dwindling in twilight.

I wrote this while I was sitting on a log in a forest in Queens; it was my first time ever going there. We passed a Family Dollar on the way there. I guess I had some idea of a cinquefoil from AW02-03 Virginia Creeper. 

AT SUPPER

Sinking in the cinquefoliage, Light melting leaves — Greys and browns Skittering refuse; Granular granola from the Family Squalor store On the corner of mossgreen moathill.

Brown bagged, now lagged; Lager spilled about the Leaves leaves a foam Like Aphrodite of the sea.

Diffuse light -- Recluse, brown. Slow ploddingpokingplotting, Eight arms scuttling. Tufts on its legs, Tufts in the North Tufts at thirteen — Homonyms and patronyms; Pale and translucent; Little scratches on white, Sun shining in the night.

Summers come and go quick as they came, taking with them our lovers and the sweatshirts we once wore to keep them close. Grace Halio takes us into the sadness that remains once the dust clears on Long Island Beach, once you pick yourself up and begin the process of moving on.

I can still remember what moving on looked like...

Process

remnants of the summer things like crickets and gasoline, bonfires and ratty sweatshirts, remind me of how meredith would ride shotgun in the ford and i would drive half the length of long island.

summer weekends colored by beaches, bagels, and best friends, open roads at 1am, the sound of frank sinatra.

i spent this summer waiting to get over a lost love, endlessly recounting how old habits are hard to break.

once, he taught me how to golf, which ultimately was a failed venture. i played baseball for eight years and i couldn’t — can’t — swing a golf club for the life of me simply because the movement isn’t the same.

there is a photo of us where i am caught off guard and grasping onto his arm. i still know the feeling of his button down, and the feeling of the summer wind.

i am slowly letting go of those moments, memories. waiting for old habits to disappear, knowing that i can unlearn them.

my best friends and I know that we can fall back on friendship, always, but this doesn’t change the fact that we are each still waiting for someone to love us in all of the right ways.

there was one morning that i woke up and found a kind of clarity, happiness, with someone else

the kind that makes me feel like it’s a saturday morning even if it’s a thursday at 8 a.m. where the sun is warm and i’ll buy raspberries at the farmers market just because everything feels right, like it’s finally fallen into place.

inexplicable happiness, i’m slowly learning is a process of healing

 Editor's Note: A version of this poem appears on Washington Square News' creative writing blog, Under the Arch.