Studio LERIAL

We sit in a café opposite one another again

He orders tomato soup

I order nothing

I watch his averted gaze

Wondering

If he’ll burst into a thousand ice chips

If I say what I want to say

.

The bowl arrives

Black pepper, salt

Hold the soy sauce

He slurps in an anti-clockwise spiral

I watch

Like a fiancé-to-be waiting for their future bride

To bite into the 24-carat incrusted chocolate cake

I wait

.

He stops

.

And for a moment

I think it’s me that caused the pause

That my vocal vibrations creeped out the single-glazed window

Of my mouth like a teenager on a night out

Like-

.

A one-inch beast

Emerges from the bowl

Primero: trunk

Segundo: ivories

Tercero: the eyes of Ellie

He doesn’t flinch

Or move an inch

Just eats around

.

But elefante aint having it

That soup-y orange Ellie

Struts her gloopy body

Up the metal of his spoon

Kisses Mr on the pout

Then jumps over the abyss

Into my mouth-

(Why was my mouth open?)

.

Senses willing, she makes me sneeze

And out pours mini-Ellies

In twos, in threes, then an incessant stream

Mr just looks at me

Hand too heavy to pass me a tissue

Pupils too placid to pass me compassion

He looks down and continues to eat around

.

But the filing cabinet mouthed customers are now covered in gloop

Café walls peppered with paw prints

Covered in soup

These slimy splattered customers form a coup

Their edacious eyes want the scoop

They play grandma’s footsteps with our conversation

But before they manage to grab those keys

(which I am also in search of)

Our child exits from the loo

Climbs his two-foot tall body

Into the high chair

Orange toilet paper stuck to his shoe.