Making Frenchfries

A whimsically dark, pun-intended poem told from the perspective of a French fry.

My blood runs cold
Freezing and expanding
Bursting my veins
Like opening a soda can that’s been in the freezer too long.
Shards of ice embedded in my flesh
I shiver at night as salt pours from my eyes-
Iodized tears
I look on from afar as they peel off my skin like a potato
And slather me with margarine compliments-
I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter.
Cut into thin slices and thrown in a vat of my own loathing
Predestined to drown in preconceived notions
A bubbling, babbling, boiling broth
Suffocating me with reduced-reused-recycled oil-
Grimy grease
Overheated, overcrowded, overdone
My skin shrivels
Brown and leathery
My edges begin to crust
Finally I’m taken out
Like a fish scooped out of an oil spill
Only to be met by the condemning bill of a pelican-
Food for the foul.
All my pieces are divvied and distributed-
Separate packaging for each part of me.
Each portion of my being doomed to a variation of the same fate.
Consumed by a dozen different mouths.
A dozen different beasts.
Digested a dozen different ways.
But at the end of the day,
I’m reduced to nothing more than human waste.