Last Meal: Breakfast Tacos, San Antonio, Tejas

Breakfast Tacos, from the series Seven Days, 2003, by Chuck Ramirez Let me be your last meal. Let me harvest the notes I took from your mother’s watery hands, street vendors in Rome, Ms. Rosie from our taquería, you: in the sun, in the open air, let me give you zucchini and their elusive blossoms — my arms, my hands. Pumpkiny empanadas of my feet, pulpy as a newborn’s. Guisada’d loin of my calf muscle. On a plate white and crisp as the ocean, lemoned eyeballs like two scallops. The red, ripe plum of my mouth. Perhaps with coffee, you’d have the little lobe of my ear sugared as a wedding cookie. The skin of my belly, my best chicharrón, scrambled with the egg of my brain for your breakfast tacos. My lengua like lengua. Mi pescuezo, el mejor hueso. Let me be your last meal: mouthfuls of my never-to-be-digested face, my immovable femur caught in your throat like a fish bone. Let my body be what could never leave your body.