Gabrielle M. Borgia

On the Corner Gabrielle M. Borgia

on retroactivity

Jennifer Glass

sometimes I find myself halfway curled around materiality, my brain a cloud to hold the mist in. I don’t worry if I should mention this when they ask me for spiraled scrapbooks and postcards. to me this cloud I took home in a doggy bag.

often the memories grow tart, salt shaker, match on the side of my pillowcase. when you stare at a photograph until the background becomes familiar: can’t place the focal point, blurry among the foliage.

because truthfully 5 months all still watercolor: the French bread in the autumnal kitchen with the Canadien high schooler, 5’3, off to Europe for a year, so brash, so uninhibited; the gnocchi, six glasses of wine, blaring alarm clocks, headaches; the curling of the Sehnsucht around the fairy lights, forced the consonants on my tongue like split pea, blend in and soak; the slanted sidewalks of the secondhand shops who greeted me with bienvenida, but who kept time charts: who lied about their recurring emails; here, I am a snow angel. Here, I live in the margins.

when I am home, my family gifts me a photo album. I fill only 50 of the 60 pages the others are use-proof. when I try it all looks so foggy, the colors look so dull next to the others. now it’s looping songs that wore out so long ago. Shudder enough and they sound new. I wonder if it is okay to hold up my mind’s cache like siblings competing for who grows fastest. I never knew I’d get this tall—suddenly, I am so focused on how romantic the world looks from this angle. Like moonbeams and cigarettes.