Cooking for someone can be loaded with danger.
He’ll get here at six and I’m filled with a small fear
of conversation at the table.
I always toy with the edge across my throat,
between the cabbage, the duck and coffee we stare into.

There are many ways to scream.
I’ve chosen the silent one
because I”m afraid of being discovered as I am, not
who he remembers 20 years ago.

I want to say thing have changed since then.
I’ve smoked my lungs black and eaten my heart out.
Lost each leaf of hair and seen friends to their graves.

So the real talk is never said.
After a polite time he leaves a bit early.
I want to re-run dinner again
with simpler food, the apartment a little messy.
I’d like to walk right over the edge and say,
‘Who we were then is fable.’
But that takes believing we’re someone right now.

Instead I sit down to a second meal.
I’m famished from things left unsaid,
go to bed too early, and wake totally
at the national anthem, before the TV hisses
into blue snow.

I get up. I eat again.