By Carla Sofia Ferreira

Left without argument,
merely to stand for a while by the river
once frozen and now free flowing, the evening
turns the sky in once more and out and again to dust and glimmer
and back to how each thing simply was.

The walk down staircases
becomes the walk towards the river,
not thinking—the grace of repetition— |
these are the ways in which I tie together loose ends.
Waiting for an answer without asking a question,
looking towards the curve of architecture above moving water.

Carry me to the bridge.
Take me home.
It’s past the time of sitting on the empty bench.

What closure I get from the evening
settling itself in the frost that embraces me without asking.
Everything becomes familiar:

The stars they hang upon the city streets,
each tripping brick falling into one another,
even the train station greets me as though I cannot leave.

Everywhere, I am looking for the answer to the question I do not ask.

Each time, I hear it: you can let go now.
Only I don’t listen and instead wait by rivers,
watching the evening and I measure

Carla Sofia Ferreira is a Portuguese-American poet from Newark, NJ currently teaching English language development to immigrant high schoolers in the Bay Area. As an undergrad at Harvard, she was selected to write a creative thesis in poetry, from which many poems about trees grew. Past and forthcoming work can be found in journals such as The Lascaux Review, Shot Glass Journal, and Awkward Mermaid.