For Lily, All at Once
- Mar 28, 2025
- 2 min read
by Nate Hirschtick
Well one time we walked and walked and walked we must have walked a thousand miles it was nighttime all night we walked through the park up DeKalb and down Norstrand I took the G train home after I thought of you the whole way the way you had your books stacked on your dresser it was one on top of the other it was so impractical but you made it work so beautifully they were next to an antique lamp that your grandma gave you cool grandma I thought to myself I couldn’t believe you had hardwood in a rent controlled one-bedroom yes we visited your place but it was the walking that felt like home something about the wet concrete looked different with you and me and you loved to point out art in the windows of galleries after they closed you really liked that one with the flowers I think they were hydrangeas the big blue oil painting in the big gold frame it felt so fancy to talk about like we had big fur coats on and when we saw big fancy restaurants we could go and eat there I even thought about hailing a taxi one time just because it seemed so lovely to sit in a big yellow cab with you and tell the driver to go wherever forever and let the streetlights brush our shoulders the only downside is we wouldn’t be walking anymore sometimes I think I like broke romance anyway it feels more rich and we still ate well when we bought that can of the nicer crushed tomatoes and made sauce with it it bubbled and splattered red a little on your apron that I think was a gift from your dad it had a beach on it and I put on that Wes Montgomery album Incredible Jazz Guitar and it was so perfect I swear I’ll never listen to it again and your kitchen was small but just big enough for two loves I looked at you you know when we were waiting to cross Myrtle and I saw the way light hit your hair it glowed and that’s what I thought about on the train home really not the painting or the apron it was the way you even breathed summer.
Nate Hirschtick studies English and computer science at Santa Clara University.
