The Wake

A very juicy salmon I ate
smoked, toppled with balsam and yellow
cut-up tidbits unfamiliar to me (they were mangoes).

Sliced cucumber crunched amidst my teeth, it was
sipped up by coffee milky with soy
“I don’t know if I like beets,” he said, uncertain.

“Try the borscht anyway,”
He would cave eventually, but
just not that afternoon.