Real Nostalgia by Stella Kim

Real Nostalgia

by Stella Kim

the mahogany shelf

is oozing with life:

fitzgerald hemming

way Steinbeck thor

eau shakespeare mi

lay klimt cummings

oh yes especially cummings we like him the most, and there are others: poe white dali.

a death wish, coffee table cancer, my eye gravitates to a framed black & white of sum

mer — me and tess. I'm smiling with the accumulated wisdom of my 14 years but

she, she's looking up and off at something that will never, ever focus. I stop

my search and pick up the photograph, it's smudged a little and the glass

is cracked from where I hurled it across the room following news of

su expiracion. you know, she was my best friend and I hated her with

all my heart. You'd think that five years would dull some ache

but it doesn't, cackling on the wash hot tears stolen boy

friends petty thievery-. these memories bleed, yelling

furious laughing hilarious dying victorious — she

always had illusions of grandeur, she walked

off the end of a dock, her overcoat filled

with pebbles, this tess and left me

alone, teresa charles died of suicide,

angrily, I grab the evil picture &

knock it over, cracking the

glass again, but this

time I leave it

as It should

be, face

down.