I ordered the same thing

I ordered the same thing.

Told myself I wouldn't, then did.

The woman at the window didn't remember me.

Why would she.

She handed it through in a bag

already going translucent at the bottom,

grease spreading slow through the paper

before I reached the car.

I sat in the lot.

Passenger seat empty.

I set the bag there while I looked for napkins

and watched the stain spread,

that slow bloom of oil across brown paper.

Four years. I thought it would taste different.

Worse, or better, or at least

like something that had happened.

It tasted the same.

Same char, same salt, same particular weight of it.

That was the part I hadn't thought through.

I watched two kids argue over a shopping cart.

I ate everything.

Drove three hours with the stain

on the seat beside me,

a shape I kept almost looking at

and then not.