Sitting in Central Park
by Jessica Sung

I choose a bench facing west to see the sun set but it passes
without a single pink cloud or orange stripe—instead, hundreds
of floating bright yellow squares blink awake against the inked sky,
each square a couple uncorking another bottle, a student in denial
of a deadline, a cook scrubbing phantom garlic from his hands, as down
here on earth a mother runs, breathless, up to her husband and child
who have been waiting for her all this time at the bench next to mine,
as a girl marching arm in arm with her friend says I was so stressed
I had to get out of there, as a coach tells her protégé not to look
at his watch because it ruins his form but good job, I’m proud of you,
do better, as a grandma bemoans tomorrow’s canceled trip to Florida,
while two identical dogs leap toward each other, as if to say I see you,
I know you, I am you, what luck it is to find ourselves together again, here—
but with a tug of each leash they part ways forever, and in that moment
I feel it, the weightlessness of it, of what it means to finally let go.

---

Jessica Sung walks and writes in NYC. Her current fixations are turkey sandwiches, aventurine, and alternate realities.

@jess.sung