I telepathically spoke to the head of lettuce.

I inquired about greenness.

I riffed on salad-art and spinach-envy.

I tried to cheer him up.

Picture, I said, starving children in India,
their bones screaming through skin;

what they wouldn’t do for a leaf of you now,
I told him. How important you are
in this big crazy world.
Not to mention all those vitamins you carry
like so many credit cards.

But the lettuce was depressed.
Nothing seemed to work.

So I entertained him
with how I stomped grapes
with bare feet, I described
the honey-wheat smell
of my daughter’s hair.
I told him how I chased seagulls on a beach
with my son in Cozumel.
I mentioned the highway
between your nipple and neck,
the rest stop of your collarbone,
how you always step out of jeans, dainty,
like you’re climbing a barbed-wire fence.

Which backfired.

He saw how much better it is to be human.

But I felt happier.

Then you came home and we put the lettuce
out of his misery.

It was all for the best I guess.