2

I wanted the boy I loved to kiss me in Central Park before I knew
I loved him or that none of it would last.
Not us or the park,
where they’ve set up a makeshift hospital fit for a warzone.

All I wanted was the kiss and the guilt of the sun’s gaze,
for him to tell me my fortune without words.

Years ago, my fiancé and I walked the dog there.
I have a photo of myself in an army green coat
holding our dog like a prize ham. He darts his tongue toward me
like mad, like

if we don’t do this now, then when?

Published April 30th, 2020

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.