I touch your back with my dirty hands.
I open you.
I feel the growing heat
          between the sinews
            and the egg-white bun.
                       I eat the white of the bun.
                       I used to make cranes
                                   that you tossed away
                                               like promises
                                   in a severing winter.
                       I come to you in my dirty self, a poster
                                   full of deliberate errors
                                               made under duress
                                   by a young and willful staff.
                       Here I eat you. Here, a food truck
                                   sells sorrows in bun-sized bits, with you
                                               wrapped in newspaper articles
                                                           with jarring terms.
                                               I eat you whole, including
                                   the mayo on the photos, but soon
                       darkness drizzles, my image of you
            is a blur, my pen a bird in the air,
                       a uniformed officer smiles at me
            to scrape off even the salt in my hair
and dumps it back into the ocean.

Copyright © 2025 by Weija Pan. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 28, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.