The casual conversations, the lighthearted jokes –
It is almost like childhood when we had dinner together.
Now we’re back at it again after years of separation,
but the lights are a bit dim.

You order the most expensive things, things you’d never
thought of ordering for me before: 
Wagyu beef, premium scallops, foie gras and
deluxe hotpot with abalone… I feel the bile rising up my throat, tell you that

it’s enough, it’s enough, please Idon’twanttoeatandIcannoteatand
everythingissoexpensive – but you wave me off. My heart drums
with dreadful excitement when you order our favourite unagi, upsized
for good measure.

I’ve never seen you treat anyone like this before. Anyone
except your exes. I see your eyebags and I wonder
if it is me who’s been keeping you up at night instead of your flings.
I wonder if you are as generous with me as you are with them.

The doctor said I’ll die if I don’t eat. I guess that’s why you finally
showed up at mom’s place today in a white suit after years of silence,
looking faintly like Prince Charming from my childhood.
And I am barely a Cinderella, too sick for the gown and have long outgrown the shoe.

Everything cost two hundred dollars in total, but you pay without the blink of an eye.
I watch you claim your rebates and points and you tell me how this will be
our thing now. We’ll go to a better place next time, with better food,
better people, better experiences, and I’ll get better, better, better…

When I reach home, I stick the fingers down my throat,
my eyes burn and blur at the remnants
of your sheer love. Tonight’s dinner is a first,
and I will make it last.