Heartburn to Follow

It doesn't take much imagination
to picture the contents
of a bachelor's freezer
but when he's laid off
bored out of the remnants of his mind
and trying to pinch pennies
every meal discovered
is an extra day above ground.
It's usually less glamorous
than leftovers from
another aborted date
but waste is the predecessor
to pride and the fall.

Today's lunch and tonight's dinner
came from the icebox's bowels.
The plastic container was covered
in white crystals telling its age
like the rings of a tree.
I scraped it off until beans
suspended in a red base
were visible.
A lonely bay leaf garnished the middle.
Not my cooking.
Not my doing.
I knew from where this manna came
though at the time of its conception
things were far from heavenly.

But today every bite of spicy nourishment
reminded me that someone once cared enough
to save a spot for later
and maybe there's hope
that they're all...
...no, that I'm not so bad.

I succumb to the urge to thank her
instantly reconsidering.

"Find a nice young thing
to have and hold,"
she tells me
delirious from the sleeping pills
she's still depending on
wherever she may be.
The typos in her message
prove my smirking assumption.

"Dead birds. Taxidermy tethers the body
but what happens to the soul?
Encased? Prisoner?
Or escaped? Free flying?"
Rare form indeed.
They must've upped her 'script.
I reply as honestly as possible.
"No worries there.
You're a bird that can't be tethered.
That much I learned,"
and bid her goodnight
as the beans do their work
proclaiming their march
back out of my body.

Love's never extinguished.
It only changes form.
I'll send mine down the drainpipe
in the morning.