How To Eat Fried Rice

Poised on chopsticks, the mortared rice
slick with oil and crumbled egg bits,
would never be enough to amend the hunger
of the day’s long hours.
Instead
lift the humble bowl with
flecks of bright green scallions and
miniature cubes of salty sausage
(cut perfectly to distract from that which is missing)

to your lower lip and open wide,
pushing with chopsticks
the avalanche of finely chopped
spare parts of yesterday’s meals
so that forgetting is done in shifts.