Hannah Larrabee

You know, it could be the constant gun deaths or maybe

the politicians high-stepping through the Capitol

rotunda at the first sign of the violence they provoke,

or the extinction of Bachman’s warbler, or my worry

about the long-necked Bird of Paradise, or Ron DeSantis,

take your pick, dear Cheetos, I open your bag and

it’s hard to stop, why stop, even if you could answer

that question this is all by design, evolving to the point

of Cheetos and once Cheetos then an ever-perfected Cheetos,

flavor to texture to tongue a golden ratio, a fractal repeating

in each Cheeto, and maybe you already agree with me

so the question isn’t is this good for me? It’s why have I chosen

the vice that leaves all the evidence? My fingers stained electric

orange, even after I’ve moved from the utility of fingers

to my more generous mouth, as I would with a lover,

I’m thinking this color isn’t anywhere else in the multiverse,

and even if neon orange dusts the surface of some distant,

lifeless planet, I’m sure Cheetos only appear in this universe,

the Cheeto-verse, as one might call it, and there is a question

I wish every gunman would ask himself: of all the harm

imaginable, why can’t it just be this: the growling disapproval

of a stomach opposed to preservatives, not the shattering

of bodies, the eviction of so many beautiful souls, just once

let a friend fall asleep with their head on your shoulder,

it takes a softer version of the world you build inside, Cheetos

are just one language for the difficult now that must be fed,

and as an act of resistance, I imagine Cheetos stuffed into

the barrels of guns, or an entire bag tossed to the floor the way

she dropped my jacket so we could hold each other because

the world blessed us with this—the closer orbit of our lives.