Phoebe Woo is a rising senior from Media, Pennsylvania. Her work often centers around themes of love, family, and the sweeter details of life. Phoebe has been writing for as long as she can remember, and she believes that the arts are the strongest tools of empathy and connection between people. When she’s not writing, you can find her spending time with friends in the nearest coffee shop.

This short piece was inspired by a bench plaque on the Brooklyn Promenade.

Not long ago you were a daughter, neighbor, student, friend. Only two years have passed since you last blinked the sleep from your eyes, inhaled the dew of a dawning city that knew you, loved you, and now remembers you. Somewhere someone carries you in their jacket pocket, wearing your tattered handkerchief until it bores new holes where fingers should be. Somewhere someone else reads your name for the first time.

Now you sprawl across the better half of Brooklyn, polished silver amid a tangle of wood and rust. You’re flanked by fellow dedications to friends and children and lovers, all remembered, all loved. You’re in good company. Side-by-side you sit, an ensemble of legacies New York has left behind, and take in the blooming world. Up ahead is a jogger with neon orange sneakers, sweating to outstrip his latest pace. A little behind him walks an elderly man, tapping his cane to a rhythm only he can hear and smiling faintly at the view. There’s a polite bubble of laughter; a tour group has just passed. If you listen closely enough, you can make out a mother, father, daughter, and son, who speak in a slightly slower cadence from their chipper guide. All around, footsteps overlap and overtake one another, drumming a rippling beat as the city thunders on.

Perhaps it’s familiar to you, cupping a stranger’s weary back, offering a moment of relief and release from the sweltering heat. After all, this is how someone chose to immortalize you, engulfing your name in their gratitude like a bee in resin. Perhaps they thought it fitting, to gift you an eternal skyline that claims you as one of its own. Now every passing stranger will love, and remember, you too.

Overhead, the air is ablaze with a guttural hum, marking the flight of a different sort of bird. These creatures breathe gas and fuel, with steel for wings and engines for bellies that groan their arrival at every stage. Fat white bullets streak latticed paths across the sky, mirroring the steady migration of ships below. Can you hear the notes of nature’s birds, just beneath the clamor? They sing a softer tune, but even this is proof of the great continuation. Metal and feathers coexist in one long pathway, and so do you.