live más
by Abigail Rundle
We sit in parking lots, devouring fast
food from the only place open this late,
surrounded by a graveyard of hot sauce
packets and empty Taco Bell wrappers:
this is what it means to be young
And not care about your well-being.
I only find myself here with my favorite beings,
only after driving here incredibly fast
so we can arrive while the night is still young.
But the only appropriate time to be here is late
when your food is smashed in the wrapper
and you’ve asked for a shit ton of sauce.
The speakers blast songs about getting sauced,
but we couldn’t sing along being
that we were eating the cheese off the wrappers.
These rappers spit their bars so fast
that my lines are always a little late;
just because we are young
doesn’t mean that we’ll always be young
and we’ll all forget about how to get sauced.
“I didn’t plan on showing up to class late
but the lady at the drive through was being
really rude.” My words came out too fast,
like I was pretending to be a rapper.
But I could never be one of those rappers
that raps about being the youngest
in the game and whose tracks are dumb fast
and how does one even get sauced?
My friends care more about my well-being
than I do even though it’s my period that’s late.
Now the hour has turned from mild to late
and the floor of the car is flooded with wrappers.
A car pulls up next to us and suddenly we are being
judged by a stranger for being two young
women eating tacos covered in hot sauce
while crying over the gravelly voice of “Fast
Car.” We take advice from many young rappers
about living fast and getting “lost in the sauce”
but no one talks about being at Taco Bell this late.