I mean the silence of its drive-thru

is also my silence, my refusal

to cede the ground of my heart

 

Another way to say this is regret

 

When I tell you this Taco Bell is a mirage

I mean it both is and is not a Taco Bell

 

It looks like a Taco Bell but cannot fulfill its purpose

 

(Stop me if you’ve heard this one before)

 

At this Taco Bell you can ask for anything

you want, and nothing happens

 

I’ll leave it to you to decide

if that’s a blessing or a curse

 

When I tell you this Taco Bell is a gift

I mean it’s a one-way confessional

that will take what you tell it to the grave

and, as it turns out, beyond

 

When I tell you the Taco Bell is haunted now

I do not mean it is abandoned, exactly

 

The lights are on and the doors are locked and

I can see someone moving around inside

doing god knows what

 

They don’t owe me an explanation

I know how to give plenty of space

 

At a Taco Bell 450 miles away

my order shows up on a screen

and that Taco Bell is now on notice

 

The haunting begins like this

 

The living get no warning—

one day a seven-layer burrito

is the last seven-layer burrito

I will ever order

and that has to be enough

 

When I tell you the haunted Taco Bell was gone

when I drove by the other day what I mean

is it will always be the haunted Taco Bell even now

a bland coffeeshop has appeared in its place

 

(There is no exorcism powerful enough for a city

haunted by a remnant White Castle so strong

even I can see its shape around the oil change joint

that replaced it years before I moved here)

 

When I tell you the fire sauce I could not get

is not a metaphor I mean is this all the danger

I aspire to, a touch of heat lashing my tongue?

 

And when I say I can still taste

my last order I mean to say

how can we be at a drive-thru

one minute and dispersed

into speaker static the next

 

It is another way of saying I wish

both the wanting and the getting got easier

 

Another way of saying I feel stripped to the bone