Remi Recchia
On Learning of a Friend’s Suicide While Waiting in Line at the Local Taco Bell
For Tyler
I got the call mid-order, my eyes locked on the digitized
Crunchwrap Supreme glowing like a beast on the menu board.
I have some news, your brother said. You might want to sit
down for this. The beast could bathe in unlimited queso
on my plate. It’s Tyler, he said. He’s dead.
A blurring of space. The quesadillas and fiesta potatoes
suddenly unapproachable. The slushie machine a wasteful
aberration. The sixteen-year-old cashier accusing
me with Sir? Sir? as if she could not see I was dying.
My feet melted and stuck to the floor, took root like fried
beans seared to the bottom of a to-go box. And to think
I once was hungry.
This is imagined.
Your gun that you named father is not.
That is also imagined, in a way.
What your father did to you is not.
Must we always grow into them? Our fathers? Men
that were once boys thin or fat, mean or sweet, settled into complacency
among ex-wives and -lives? Your life I worshipped
for a time. I would rush across town at the slightest
threat, give stop signs a passing glance, treat
one-ways as if they had infinite dimensions. I was there
when you bought your first gun, watched you stroke
the trigger like a pet not yet submissive.
Does that make me complicit?
Maybe. But I think you found death as inevitable as seeing
your face in the mirror: still yours, but incorporeal.
A phantom self spun into the ether.
I am sorry I couldn’t save you, but come: I can make
you a plate. I can pile burritos and hot sauce and beef
nachos—everything you could never afford—on top of your appetite
endlessly. I can eat tacos and tortillas until I throw up and expel
my endless grief in the Taco Bell bathroom until
they close the lobby and then I’ll hop in a car, drive to the next
town, eat more and more until I burst and turn into your image,
belly up on the bathroom floor tiles, suicide note stuffed inside my mouth
with my brain curled up
next to me like a caterpillar.
For Tyler
I got the call mid-order, my eyes locked on the digitized
Crunchwrap Supreme glowing like a beast on the menu board.
I have some news, your brother said. You might want to sit
down for this. The beast could bathe in unlimited queso
on my plate. It’s Tyler, he said. He’s dead.
A blurring of space. The quesadillas and fiesta potatoes
suddenly unapproachable. The slushie machine a wasteful
aberration. The sixteen-year-old cashier accusing
me with Sir? Sir? as if she could not see I was dying.
My feet melted and stuck to the floor, took root like fried
beans seared to the bottom of a to-go box. And to think
I once was hungry.
This is imagined.
Your gun that you named father is not.
That is also imagined, in a way.
What your father did to you is not.
Must we always grow into them? Our fathers? Men
that were once boys thin or fat, mean or sweet, settled into complacency
among ex-wives and -lives? Your life I worshipped
for a time. I would rush across town at the slightest
threat, give stop signs a passing glance, treat
one-ways as if they had infinite dimensions. I was there
when you bought your first gun, watched you stroke
the trigger like a pet not yet submissive.
Does that make me complicit?
Maybe. But I think you found death as inevitable as seeing
your face in the mirror: still yours, but incorporeal.
A phantom self spun into the ether.
I am sorry I couldn’t save you, but come: I can make
you a plate. I can pile burritos and hot sauce and beef
nachos—everything you could never afford—on top of your appetite
endlessly. I can eat tacos and tortillas until I throw up and expel
my endless grief in the Taco Bell bathroom until
they close the lobby and then I’ll hop in a car, drive to the next
town, eat more and more until I burst and turn into your image,
belly up on the bathroom floor tiles, suicide note stuffed inside my mouth
with my brain curled up
next to me like a caterpillar.
Remi Recchia is a trans poet and essayist from Kalamazoo, Michigan. He is a Ph.D. candidate in English-Creative Writing at Oklahoma State University. He currently serves as an associate editor for the Cimarron Review and Reviews Editor for Gasher Journal. A four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Remi’s work has appeared or will soon appear in Best New Poets 2021, Columbia Online Journal, Harpur Palate, and Juked, among others. He holds an MFA in poetry from Bowling Green State University. Remi is the author of Quicksand/Stargazing (Cooper Dillon Books, 2021); his chapbook, Sober, is forthcoming with Red Bird Chapbooks.
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Twitter: @steambbcrywolf
Instagram: @remi_dreamer
SOCIAL MEDIA HANDLES
Twitter: @steambbcrywolf
Instagram: @remi_dreamer