I feel at home at Taco Bell, as the cuisine
echoes the worst of my mom’s cooking:
cheese that tastes like beans,
beans that taste like rice,
rice that tastes like flour.
It’s where I go when I am missing someone,
usually near their Jesus’ hour, between
the last sip of a lunch hour Pepsi
and the first after school Cinnabon
Delights clutched and munched
in little fingers.
I'll lean in whenever a raven haired Circe
at a corner table, resembling Sabrena—
that witch who first broke my heart—
casts a disdainful glance my way.
They’ll tug at the corners of their
bad girl leather jacket, gather
their familiar charms, and
shoot me a bird as
they vanish in
the smoke of
memory.
And then, on some evenings, customers
with my mother’s laugh will walk in
and then out, their arms cradling
grease-slicked terracotta bags,
sacred relics in the
fluorescence.
The smell of cheap tacos in brittle shells
filled with Hamburger Helper,
gummy cheese, old lettuce,
canned diced tomatoes-
that heavenly mess
masquerading as
a meal would
pull me back
to her
cocina.
In the haze of the Taco Bell fryers, the grease
sings of her failures and resilience. Like her,
I would smile through it all—always
apologizing yet always trying—
in the end, scraping meat
off chipped plates
remembering my mother’s taco shells and
refusing to wipe away the grease,
letting it linger an echo of
loves imperfect folds.
