To be honest, I was just about to eat
a sandwich before you called. Cheese
with a healthy dose of salad cream.
I used to eat when I was young,
when my knees didn’t dream of a furnace.
I’d usually have a crisp bit of lettuce
buried under an unnecessary layer of butter
on the top slice of brown bread,
but what we have left has rotted
in the vegetable crisper next to a tomato
slowly leaking like a brain taking on too much.
How about you?

© Carl Burkitt 2022