is National Taco Day and as I breathe in
writing this poem,
someone, somewhere—
is giving birth for the first time
or crying on cold tiles of a bathroom floor
or sinking their teeth into a cheesy gordita crunch
or burying a parent in fresh earth
or getting drunk with their best friend
on a rooftop in a city I’ve never been to.
Everything is delicious, and sad,
the way life hardens in the warmest way
as we swallow the notion of what it means
to dive in, to live más
Kara Knickerbocker is the author of The Shedding Before the Swell (2018) and Next to Everything that is Breakable (2017). She currently lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where she works at Carnegie Mellon University, writes with the Madwomen in the Attic at Carlow University, and co-curates the MadFridays Reading Series. Find her online at www.karaknickerbocker.com.
Taco Bell Quarterly 