Emma Bernstein The Last Time You Arrive in Daly City

The last time you arrive in Daly City, you cross the overpass under impasto clouds carved into a pink sky, cradled by the crush of cars careening to and from San Francisco. You count blessings on the back of a stray black cat, walk past rows of pastel houses, past the older boys gathered in the shade of eucalyptus on John Daly Boulevard, past a shopping cart, abandoned, its front wheels pushed up onto the curb, cigarette butts pressed into pavement’s creases

and you don’t think to remember eleven years old, your first best friend pouring pixie dust on your tongue. A prayer and she pushes you in a shopping cart down the longest hill she can find and you scream

and don’t believe you are ever going to die

and when you see the tender supermarket glow of the shopping center in evening, you don’t think about pop tarts and coca cola, your older brother walking too fast down fluorescent aisles and your short legs straining to catch up.

You don’t know that this is the last time you will arrive in Daly City,

don’t know that this is the last time you will sprint up the marbled steps of your apartment complex, so you forget to notice how this town tastes like gasoline and sea salt and everybody heading someplace else.

Emma Bernstein Cornell University, ’21