The casual way I flipped through the pages sickened me
I thought of typhoid fever in the sub-tropics
shipwrecks that become fish condominiums under the sea
the homeless man outside in the rain who never once smiled
for lack of teeth
and the way I watched the stairs to see the legs
that would come down them,
then the faces which were always a disappointment,
I felt a sudden aversion
as though distaste and fasting had become the same thing
when I wasn’t looking…
closing my eyes to sun tracers
I decided to flip through six more pages,
then be done with the thing.
