Chinese-Japanese Food in Boston’s Chinatown

You are a spicy tuna roll and I am your chopsticks.
We are downtown, in the surrounds of snow and
extra wasabi. You are rolled in sticky white rice-
all soft and raw and pink in the middle. We are
the dog and rat bleeding onto the hard, brown
table. Two sugar packets shoved under one leg.
My arms and hands are large, clunky boots, still
wet dripping cold. There’s soy sauce up to our
ankles now-we are being dipped in it: salty, warm.
Hot water tilts and becomes soft. You are breath-
white on the glass and invisible to the outside…
and it stretches-engulfs you-all dark and damp.
We order bubble tea-leave too good of a tip and
walk out onto the chilly, concrete, narrow streets.