Sandwich Public Library

Imagine how confusing the words might be
if you had recently arrived from another land.
You are hungry. And this building beckons you.
But libraries only loan you things. You have to give them back.

How cruel to check out just the perfect sandwich
you are craving at this moment, and have to return it.
What sort of sadistic library is this? Is this another trap
for outsiders? This is a country of unrivaled trap-makers.

How can you just stare at it on a white plate, you think,
when you hunger so? And how could they possibly keep
the sandwiches fresh for years? Maybe they are simulacra,
pretend sandwiches, like wax people or plastic flowers,

or the way books are pretend lives? Maybe the point
is just to stare at the sandwich on its white plate,
to know it belongs to everyone and no one,
like a country, to know that it is an exercise in wanting,

and somehow to refrain from attacking the sandwich,
despite anything your body might tell you to do,
based on countless ghost wars it almost remembers
having gone through. Maybe the right thing to do

is just stare at the forever thing on its plate, to want with everyone.