I couldn’t stomach the uncertainty, so I drove to a buffet. Each table
had its own napkin dispenser, but just one table had a girl who could
never quite decide what she wanted.
Radius and ulna crossing and uncrossing, crossing and uncrossing,
I wavered between the few dishes I could eat. Each choice felt like
a door closing on its hinges and locking behind me.
I sat for hours. I could only eat a little at a time. The stomach turns
when the heart is breaking, doesn’t it? A few bites of broccoli, some noodles,
some fragments of my own bones wrapped up in a crab rangoon.
It was then that I noticed how the glass noodles were like my pale skin
in winter, and the soy sauce was like the salty sweat-slick of a lover three summers ago.
In the stir-fry I found the warm complexity of my longest relationship.
What happens to the food I don’t choose? Does someone else take it home?
I can only eat so much, but I want to taste it all. A little here, a little there,
many flavors but never a full dish, never a full stomach.
I want to experience satiation, but first someone has to be sated with me.
And I’m seated alone, just me and the napkin dispenser and my plate
full of endless options, never quite empty and never quite finished.
In the parking lot, I found that someone had tucked a card under my windshield wiper:
“Se Hacen Endulzamientos Para el Amor.” I wasn’t sure what to do with it,
so I left it on the outside and watched it flutter away on the overpass.