THAI FOOD

I've sat down at a table
In a small Thai restaurant
Just off of Van Nuys.

Diana Summer is playing
Over the speaker system
Frosty air pours from a dusty vent.

I've ordered the Tom Kai Koong
And crab fried rice –

My face glazed with demure sadness.

We used to eat Thai food together
Your straight, sheer black hair
Leading down to the small bowls

Where your neck meets your collarbone.
In the shower together, water collected
As I gently circled a bar of mint colored soap

Over the pantheon of colored tattoos
Inked on your back in your younger,

Dumber, Teenage years.

In this restaurant now
In what I guess is Los Angeles
Or part of los Angeles

Or near Los Angeles
The chairs are all wrapped in

Coarse burgundy material with white grape leaves.

The waitress has brought my soup
And I think about how you’d never eat it.
It's made with chicken stock.

I swirl my spoon through the milky liquid.

A mushroom surfaces and sinks.

A Shrimp bobs and drifts to the side of the bowl –

It all clings before being spooned,

Dumped into my mouth,

And devoured.

This is how I imagine it:

You still sprawl under sheets.
You still flat iron and comb your hair.

You shower with someone new.

This is the truth about me:

After being honked at for being
In the middle lane trying to turn left
I slam on the gas

Chase down a mini van

Catch it at a red light.
I scream into the open window,

"Why the fuck would you honk
at someone trying to make a left turn?"

The Hispanic woman driver ignores me.

She pulls up.

I drive around to her other side
I yell,

"Not so noisy now, huh?”
Nothing.  I honk.  Nothing.  I drive on.
I couldn't get through to her.

And I couldn't get through to you.

I take my last gulp, swallow hard.

The bowl is empty except for a few

red dots among the white remnants

of coconut milk.

Most of it is gone.

I'm not about to lick the surface clean.

There isn't any more room

in my temperamental gut.

Yet, there's another course left to eat

And I find it really hard to move on.