Letter From Poughkeepsie

Nikhe Braimah

It’s January and Poughkeepsie
is the wrong type of cold. You’re
in Oregon, and everyone I fuck
looks like you, tastes like highway.
I don’t drive, anymore. Just finish
your playlists, tell you there are no
good songs. Send you pictures meant
to kill—see how easily I fold into another
body? You stopped replying. I can’t write
happy things, either. Only pen letters
coated in rot. I don’t want your ending to
make sense. But it does: natural, like rats
gnawing on dead birds’ veins. I keep peering
into my palms, remembering your nails
bedding into them, how I’d feel you like an
kaleidoscope of earthquakes. The winter
keeps piling, whole world drenched in a white
cast. I want to unstomach my memory into
the void, guttural shriek in the snow. Instead,
I look out the window. I don’t see any people
in this town. Just thirty thousand rats playing
pretend.

Nikhe Braimah is a senior at Yale University. In addition to being a CCE, Nikhe is a member of WORD Performance Poetry, conducts policy research through the Yale Policy Institute, and serves as a volunteer income tax assistant through Dwight Hall.

ABOUT THE ART | North Window by Audrey Coombe, 2023. Audrey Coombe is a student at Yale University.