My father preferred a crunchwrap
double-shelled taco or a Mexican pizza

to whatever my mother had left for us
in the crock pot. On the nights he didn’t eat,

there was no question of where he’d been.
It was the dietary equivalent of cheating,

the home-grown vegetables left to simmer
into mush as he gorged himself on tortillas

white as bleach, but sweet as the empty
space inside a cavity. His body was a plant

rooted in the wrong soil, withered at
the edges. Death coiled around him

like a taproot trying to find nutrients
in clay, his pale fingers turning black

as they wrapped around another
soft taco. Even in the nursing home,

where he was the youngest by at least
thirty years, he asked his friends to bring

chalupas, bean burritos, Baha blasts,
not caring how long he lived, not wondering

if life could be more than a greasy stop
on a long stretch of road, an empty wrapper.