By Isabelle Evans
As I get perilously close to 30, my friends have started
saying awful things.
Not about me, I hasten to add –
Things like…no, I can’t eat this, it’ll keep me awake.
If I have sugar I’ll be bouncing off the walls.
If I finish that off, the food coma will last all afternoon.
I’ll bloat like a puffer fish!
I’ll burst out of my clothes!
It’ll all be over for me, if I. Eat. THAT.
They are…
fighting with food, without the fun of a food fight.
So what a battle it will be when I serve them lasagne.
There will be molten cheddar, golden and bubbling,
Pasta, delicate, jostled by the reddest of meat, the beefiest, and the silken decadence
of cheese sauce.
Wine and oil, salt, and just to break the bank, bread. Foccacia.
My friends are going to swell like balloons, elbow to elbow in rows,
tentatively asking “so how do you know our host?” as the space between them narrows.
They’ll be dropping to sleep at the table, faces blissfully blank,
dosing in their dinner, heads nodding like students in a warm lecture hall.
Because it’s a party, and we’re not having a salad.
Isabelle Evans is a London-based writer from South Wales, writing poetry and short stories which can be found in Oranges Journal, The Lovers Literary Journal, Full House Literary and Loft Books amongst others. She shares poetry on Twitter, too.