A week after you went I emailed the newspaper who broke Your story wrote the headline: Did they Fall or did they jump? When I wrote the email
I was at a bar in Boston and I Had just flown in For a concert festival and I was pretty drunk Or I had the intentions to get very drunk and Arrangements
Weren’t made yet in your town Which is all just to say I just felt The most capable of doing
Whatever I wanted in a very long time I wrote to the newspaper and asked If they realized that language mattered there And that it was very possible that readers might know
Of you and that this headline Could be a point of origin And how could they not realize this
Because I too am a writer and I feel I would try to be
An accommodating writer It felt silly to ask an establishment
Who prided themselves In writing and reporting
To ask them this very basic question
That I thought was rooted In some kind of collective humanness That people seem to talk about
Or at least “strive for” When they responded
They did not apologize And I did not respond
I realized today that the language in online papers Is not as much about the content And striving towards some “objective truth or understanding” As much as it is about calculating The typical reader and adjusting The language accordingly And some days I don’t blame them
I too am sometimes a reader and expect to be served And I sometimes feel guilty about this
Kristen Brida's poetry has appeared in Fairy Tale Review, The Journal, poetry.onl, The Pinch, New Delta Review, and elsewhere. She received her MFA from George Mason University. She currently is a columnist for The Poetry Lab, where she writes about the literary community's intersection with BookTok. She runs a TikTok account dedicated to showing poetry is for everyone @booksby_kb.