your order

every friday night 
someone rings our doorbell 
& leaves a white takeout box:
the little metal handle poised up
the red writing on the sides
may or may not say something
in another language.

neither of us order takeout
but it comes anyway & 
the box always feels heavy 
but when we open it 
in the kitchen there's
never been anything inside.

we're don't feel disappointed 
because we're used to it,
in fact the emptiness
is thrilling, like 
the empty Easter tomb.

lining the takeout boxes
on the book shelf, we check 
on them from time to time 
to see if anything has
arrived in them.

occasionally they 
will all smell like rice
or sweet & sour chicken
or lo mein so 
i go to check on them

& i feel tempted 
to climb into, to sit
all night in the clean
white vacant box.

maybe it would make me
into fried rice; eyes
falling out as green peas
& limbs spoonfuls of grain.

& maybe you would smell
food & come out to find
one of the takeout boxes full,
eager you'd plate me & eat.

when they opened jesus's
empty tomb i wonder if
rice poured out, warm soft
white rice.

i think the man with
the empty takeout boxes
is god, who else would it be?
who plays with uninhabited 
spaces like him?

it takes will to not crawl
inside one. i think about it
just about every night.

i think about your fork 
in my fried egg, your spoon
scraping the last bits
from the walls of 
the takeout box.