BOOTH, WELLINGTON, 8PM
Ingredients for six years of seller data:
One phone. Cobalt light. A table that has
never once been quiet.
Ingredients for the crusts:
Tomato. Grease. The specific yellow
a two-year-old makes of everything he touches.
Ingredients for the noise:
Jas, mouth open, one hand raised โ
you have to talk LOUDER โ
and you do, and she can't hear you,
and the clouds press low over Courtenay Place
like a lid on a pot.
Ingredients for the green:
Blue ink. Yellow ink. Accident.
Ingredients for the meal:
Star ratings. Paper plates.
A girl watching with cheerful scepticism.
A boy gesturing at something true.
A toddler eating the world slice by slice.
Method: be absent from the frame.
Be the phone. Be the half-eaten plate.
Be the cold cobalt bruise of sky
through the restaurant window,
pressing down on all of it,
going nowhere.