There is death in my right lung
And she knocks on days like these
Ones boiling like an oven
My body swaying on the skytrain
Like the skinned defeathered ducks
Hanging on the wires you find behind glass at the noodle shop
A sticker tells you a bowl accompanied
By a piece of me will be 50 baht
I will be scrumptious, I promise
I won’t taste of death
My meat will with lean
It will be juicy
My aroma will mingle with the broth
Oh what a thought!
To be a thing between your teeth
Devoured savored
Even if its just for a millisecond
Chewed up and mixed into a paste
With egg noodles
I will be yellow but we will call it golden
As i descend into the acid pool in your stomach
To be inside of you and dismantled
Pulled apart until the essence of me are rendered usable
Just amino acid and fats
It is on days like these that i think about the naked ducks
About broth and about you
What it means to die so that I might be
A thing that unfurl on your tongue
When death knocks at my right lung
A surprise visitor though welcomed
And if not about the ducks then
I count the stranger's faces
All their eyes turned downward
They too would rather be somewhere else
Waiting until they are swallowed whole
Someday rendered usable too
Whatever essence they are whittled down to
Do they think about broth about how they might taste
If the knot in their right lung comes undone
Mingle with broth like lust on their lover's tongue
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