I never thought our time together would end so suddenly. I knew that it would be hard to leave you come May, but I couldn’t have imagined it would end like this. You left so quickly, I couldn’t even say goodbye. I didn’t know it back in December, but that cold, drizzly afternoon would be our last.
I can’t remember the exact moment when I fell in love with you, but our bond grew deeper and stronger ever since that first taste of focaccia. You were always consistent, you never faltered. My sandwich was just as delicious the dozenth or twentieth or fiftieth time as it was the first. After a couple of months, you knew my name (well, half of it). We exchanged numbers. My grandparents adored you. My mother never got to meet you, and now she never will.
Can you believe our last year was our best? I came almost every week. I experimented with my order a little, but I always returned to the best part of you, that Blue Sky sandwich on pesto mayo, focaccia, black bean salad on the side. Do you even remember that that was my order? Do you remember that my birthday cake wasn’t really a cake at all, it was a pan of your mint brownies?
I don’t recognize you anymore. You don’t feel the same way you once did. I tried to make it work, I really did. But the ghost of your former self still haunts that little corner shop.
So this is goodbye. Thank you for the photos and posters and cards coating every wall, for every to-go order, for every lunch with friends, for every lunch with just myself, for every brownie saved for later, for answering every time I asked, “what is your soup of the day?”
Goodbye, Blue Sky. I will love you forever.
— Anna Kate Benedict ’20
The Radish 