"Salad Bar Misinformation" (Courtney Sniadecki)

“I think, maybe, we should try seeing other people,”
he says to me, as I stand in line at the cafeteria, waiting for

the lady in front of me to stop hogging all the ranch so
that I can have my turn with the white plastic bottle

I ask him to repeat himself because I don’t
believe that he’d do something like dump me in

a place as public as this, where the guy behind us is
so close that I can smell his garlicky breath and

when just a few moments ago, we were talking in his car
about work, about how his manager is incompetent at

hiring people for the holiday season, and
about how the lights are starting to go out in

their break room, and that he
didn’t know that fluorescents ever died

the only thing that’s changed between then and
now is the fact that I am carrying a salad that

at some point has stopped looking like a salad,
with the ranch dripping onto the mounds of bacon

could that be why he wants to leave? because my salad
looks so alien to him that I, myself, must not be normal

maybe if I add some chicken, I can tell him that
I’m trying to recreate the new salad that they have at mcdonalds

“I said… I think, maybe, we should try getting

away from these people,” he clarifies

I love this poem. The whole idea of this scenario is believable and extremely comical. This poem reflects relationships and essentially society.