Food does not live in the cloud.

You cannot forget its password,
or ask it to make your essay five times better. 
 

Food cannot fix your relationship with your mother.
It creates a table out of a messy tangle of lives.
 

Food is sacred because it puts time aside.
Food is radical because it is rooted in a place. 
 

A ceramic bowl, a tajine, a styrofoam plate.
A rooftop garden, a vineyard, a factory with fluorescent lights.
 

Hands, so many hands.
Highways, dirt, water.
 

Food contains the exact building blocks we need—
the amino acids responsible
for the creation of every protein in our body.
 

The alphabet of health that comes from a land
before words, or cookbooks, or celebrity chefs.
 

Food has done one thing better than all other technologies. 
 

Better than Nintendo,
Better than Imax,
Better than the Beatles.

Food gathers.

​

It pulls estranged bodies closer—

to smell the aromas,
to taste the hidden flavors,
to look other salivating mouths in the eyes—

​

to say
Grace.