Now is not the time to talk about the person I know who is sick
with the aches, the fever,

the bowel trouble too crude to speak of
Theirs is not my story to tell.

I once paid $70 at an Urgent Care for a flashlight in my mouth
and a recommendation to rest.

What is rest? I’ve asked my imaginary god, who we’ll call
Theo, for this purpose.

Theo has never responded with anything more than a crackle,
a cackle, a pat on the head in the form of a cool compress

I have to assemble myself.

But what did I expect, those times I fell ill and survived?
Theo has others to tend to. It’s not all me, me, me.

In hell, there is fire.
In heaven, we get what we desire.

Who taught me to believe it was only this or that?

Jiordan Castle is the author of the 2020 chapbook All His Breakable Things. A Pushcart-nominated essayist and poet, her work has appeared in Cagibi, Hobart, New Ohio Review, Third Point Press, Verdad, Vinyl, and elsewhere online and in print anthologies. She is a resident poet and essayist for the LA-based quarterly food and culture magazine Compound Butter. In 2018, she won the inaugural Pigeon Pages essay contest and is now writer and curator of the journal’s series The Long Pause… Jiordan has an MFA in Poetry from Hunter College and currently lives in New York City with her fiancé and their dog.