By Jiordan Castle

only now bright index cards tetris the windows—teen dreams taped up: Graduate. Get my braces off. Fall in love. Pass gym. Today when I passed by a group of kids stirred the breeze with obscenities, meaning summer had arrived. Like the summer I was thirteen below the ferris wheel at my hometown Y. A boy I hadn’t seen since grade school said nothing before he ignited his lighter against the hard curve of my chin in a broken circle we called our friends. You remember—Whack-a-Mole, the squirt gun game, the claw machine. The belly-up goldfish in a plastic bag. The spark & his grin, a ring toss.