Our last date was spent in a decaying shopping mall
We held hands in an FYE
And I can still recite the names of every CD
That a high school-sized me has ever purchased there
The shelves have missing teeth now
Punched out by time and indifference
DVDs have replaced “The Backstreet Boys”
And aged inside their plastic tombs
I squeeze their hand and remember
Marvel at how the past disappears behind us
How everything childishly alive
Now lays quiet and pensive,
Waiting to be remembered
The person under this skin
Can still sing every word of a forgotten era
Visit with new love
Walk its length like a sealed museum
The anatomy of a song
Only exists in the eldest ring of me now
Blood and bone
Caging the last fist of sand
Falling through an hourglass
Lindsay Young is a poet from Long Island, New York. She competed at the 2018 Women of the World Poetry Slam and represented the city of New York as a member of The Nuyorican Poets Cafe’s 2018 National Poetry Slam team. Lindsay was crowned a 2018 NUPIC (National Underground Poetry Individual Competition) Co-Champion. She was a member of the 2019 Brooklyn Slam team, and was part of their poetry production that premiered in Antigua in the Summer of 2019. She is the author of “Salt to Taste,” her debut book of poetry, which was published the Summer of 2019. She is a Winter Tangerine alumnus, a 2020 Watering Hole fellow, and her work has been published in The Fem Lit Magazine, The Offing Magazine, and featured on Blavity and SlamFind. She currently works for nonprofit organizations as a counselor and workshop facilitator, largely servicing youth of color.