A drafty basement. Bitter coffee. 12 steps.
Attendees join four-fingered hands
and bow blue, green, orange, yellow heads,
in surrender and serenity.

[This is the poem.]

If ever cheese were cheese, then surely you.
I’ll never eat another; that much is true.

There is a hum and my phone skitters an inch or so across the table, bumping into a pastel yellow beachhouse perched on wooden stilts above a vista of scenic rolling dunes.

It’s Marc, asking if I’m down for brunch tomorrow with his cousin who’s in town for a music festival.

With a sigh, I text back to say I can’t afford to keep going to brunch in the middle of the week, by means of the waffle, dollar sign, and sad face emojis

Dear Mr. Loaf,

Can I call you Meat? I’m writing because we share an affinity for renaming ourselves as grub. You were once Marvin and became so much more. Likewise, I want the culinary glory of nomenclature from foodstuffs.