Winner of the Month: Free Verse Nostalgia

By Alessandra Konzen

We aren’t capable of holding the endless hum of constant connection. We aren’t able to carry the weight of every notification. 

We aren’t meant to keep pace with chatter that never ends. 

In my mind, fall 2009 still hums in the background. 

The origins of cringe never left me. 

We still run to the store in skinny jeans or leggings tucked into Ugg boots. (Where did that Hollister mini skirt go?). 

Our liquid liner has long since dried up in the makeup bag, but Lincoln Park After Dark still clings to our nails. 

Luckily, our eyebrows grew back.  

Coffeehouses aren’t burgundy and burnt orange anymore. They’ve shifted to an olive-green roman clay. Still cozy, just not the same. 

Do people even talk in coffeehouses anymore, or only work from laptops, slipping into performative productivity contests? 

We yearn for the days when we didn’t scroll algorithms. 

We wandered into bookstores. 

We didn’t take hot girl walks, we just sprawled in the park with friends. 

We didn’t film hauls. 

We burned CDs, carefully themed by mood. Pandora was the only curated algorithm we knew. 

Our henleys, our side parts, our Bella-coded curls and carefully placed headbands, our indie sleaze aesthetic before every aesthetic had a name. 

We thought we knew everything then. 

But really, we only knew the analog coziness of a world that let us breathe, a world where unplugging wasn’t even in our vocabulary.