He says this like it is something positive.
He says it is for health
and cleanliness, anything not immediately
used, presented on a fluted
paper plate or in a tiny plastic cup
is suspect.
Contaminant. I am thinking they think of us
like this, too. Once the
thought appears, as if in a little pink bubble
over my head, I can’t shake
it—can’t stop worrying about the way my
left foot drags and turns inward,
unless I concentrate very hard. I would know
my own shape in any crowd. My family
used to joke if we had to go on the lam,
on the run from some wicked state power,
I would be their downfall, crip-bodied, stamped
with my own unique ink.
I am grieving over the word “everything.”
The word “incinerated.” I am longing to eat
everything left on the table—the bits of
onion, green flecks of cilantro, the strips
of pounded meat, which someone prepared
with what feels in the mouth like tenderness.
Also, horror. What is the way out of this?
I pick up a fresh little plastic cup and twirl it
in my fingers, its hollow fluting sound as it spins
through the nothing air.
