Trading Laterally

The egg salad sandwich
And pickle spear
Lay on a paper plate
Within its wax paper wrap
Illumined in the shaft of light
Streaming through the deli's
Dirty window.

When I stood in line
With number in hand
I very much wanted
This delicacy.

But sitting in the molded plastic
Chair
Bolted to the floor
Before a Formica table
Near the window
With two dead flies
On the trim
I suddenly
Wanted nothing more
Than being anywhere else.

Wrapping the egg salad sandwich
And pickle spear
Back into the wrapper
I abandoned
The molded plastic
Chair
Bolted to the floor
Before a Formica table
Near the window
With two dead flies
On the trim.

Offering the sandwich
To a man with a sign
That said
Will work for food
I jumped onto a bus
With molded plastic seats
Near a dirty window
With two dead flies
On the sill
Realizing
I had traded laterally
With the exception that
I was now minus
What was probably a very good
Egg salad sandwich.

Just cut the context of two
Dead flies
And the delicious quotient rose.

There's something to be said
For removing
Dead flies
And the like
For whatever's before us to
Improve its desirability.