When considering the end-of-life
care of your parents, consider
long-term care insurance.

Consider all the siblings
in the room: full, half, step &
in-laws. Complicated
webs of relationship.

Consider what you don’t know
yet, what may be revealed
by ancestry research. By 23andMe™

Somewhere there is a house with the perfect layout:
a wing for you, a wing for me, and for whomever
we love who will grow old and decline.
The accordion doors work—or don’t—depending
on whether you need to hide the parts of yourself
that show sometimes: not your best side.

Because there will be bereavement. We will never
love each other enough. Burritos are a good
family meal because we can each make to our liking
and pass on other items, circling plates around
and around. My father quiet next to me as if he isn’t listening
(sometimes he leaves his hearing aids turned off on purpose).
People are uncomfortable being observed eating: all sorts
of vulnerability. Mouths open with half-truths.
They weren’t even burritos, but tacos—
flour tortillas or hand-fried tostados, some left
too long in the oil, browned to burnt, falling
to pieces in our hands.

C. Kubasta writes poetry, fiction, and hybrid forms. Her new book of poetry Under the Tented Skin is due out from Unsolicited Press in May. She is the president of WFOP and the executive director at Shake Rag Alley Center for the Arts in Mineral Point. Find her at ckubasta.com and follow her @CKubastathePoet