Bitter Herb

The waitress is small, backing away

while my sister carves the air with her hands.

She calls it negligence, a hazard,

pointing at the jagged green leaf

I said would kill me a decade ago

just to avoid her heavy, wet soup.

It sits on the white rim,

a tiny, harmless serrated thing.

The more she defends my life,

the more the plastic booth feels like a cage.

I could tell her now, admit the fraud,

but the truth would be a different kind of salt

rubbed into a very old wound.