In and Out of Love

Olivia Lucas

ISSUE NO. 1 • To Have a heart

I chose to attend Fordham LC because of the location. I always wanted to live in New York City. I wondered how long you needed to live in the city to be a real New Yorker. I realized that when you start to hate New York as much as you love it that you are probably close. When New York is killing you, but you know you can’t live anywhere else, you begin to feel as though you belong. I wrote In and Out of Love based on these feelings. Being a college student in NYC is very different from being a student anywhere else. The city plays a larger role in your education than college itself.

We pop melatonin like penny candy,

plug our ears with toilet paper,

cover our eyes with a stretched out sock.

The radiator is broken so we lay awake

with sharp screeching until we forget

why we moved to New York.

We force ourselves to pretend

our carpet doesn’t smell like rat piss,

the tub isn’t growing mold.

Running down subway stairs

is our only rush anymore,

the only reminder we still feel

when we can’t find ourselves

in empty storefront reflections.

We play memory games

of drunk stories past, times

we walked up Broadway at 3 am,

got Big Macs, and kissed on every corner.

We loved like we love New York,

unrelenting and harrowing,

an exhausting love of ceaseless yearning.

We don’t mind neighborhood smells

because we’re too grateful to have one,

a place where we can perform permanence

in our etch-a-sketch city.

We memorize lyrics and subway routes

in hopes of understanding a way home.