One Day

after Frank O’Hara
 
 
 
One day I will actually see a meteor
shower. The kind where I own a pickup
truck and one day out of the week we
park it in a field where we’d typically
watch the ocean, but this one day you are
wearing a tank top and I can’t
believe I’ve ever seen so much of your shoulders.
 
One day I will find more hobbies.
Because fastening the latch on your locket –
lingering with the doormat upon exit of your apartment –
they’re not really hobbies I can share
with just any old friend. Tonight, my stomach is frantic
like it accidentally released a large
handful of balloons and now somebody is here
and they want all of those balloons for a party
where folks will surely be expecting them.
 
One day I will not roll over onto your cat.
I pray your cat will one day stop sleeping on my side of the bed.
 
One day I will find the courage to surprise you
with a handful of things that exist in the sky.
Perhaps you will wear the tank top. Perhaps
it will be a Friday when I’ve sneaked away from work and we
will park the truck in a field and we will look up to track
a meteor shower or a dozen balloons heading north into the mountains,
and when the night comes we will realize what we loved about
the moonlight was that it was always the sun.
 
One day the sun will promise you to reach your pen pal Ned
and give old Ned your warm regards.
 
 
 
 

Chance Castro is the author of the chapbook, Petunia (ELJ Publications, 2016). His poetry has been published in RHINO, Superstition Review, Santa Clara Review, and elsewhere. He is the founding poetry editor of The Great American Literary Magazine: @GA_LitMag on Twitter.