Pareto’s Law

I am wearing an olive green apron and 

Shout greetings at arriving friends,

Chill radiating off their slunken coats

They wore to trek to mine for dinner. 

Thermodynamics, I think, means the freeze

On their jackets mingles with steam,

Pulling out the cold, like reservoirs melting,

Releasing to craft our cozy, lazy equilibrium. 

I stir a big, fragrant pot of curry, 

Someone brought a cider that looks 

Pretty and couldn’t cost more than five dollars. 

I stop and hold it in my hands. I made a flan

And I let everyone know. The 

Basmati rice tastes sort of like Christmas,

The spices and the cider hit my stomach,

Make my cheeks red like streaks of fire

On a meteor blistering in earth’s orbit 

To end the Cretaceous period. 

I give thanks to the dinosaurs who

Gave their bones to make this home for me. 

I flop the flan on a wooden tray, and lay 

Down a pile of spoons. We eat it together —

Too eggy for some, but one couple loved it. 

Pareto’s law tells me that 80% of the flan will be 

Eaten by 20% of the dinner guests. They all leave 

Eventually and I start the dishwasher. I fall 

Asleep to the slushing, rhythmic roar of 

Hot water cleaning gunk off of cutlery. 

Sometime, the heat death of the universe will

Come for everyone still around,

When a big bang’s heat spreads thin and 

Sputters, wheezes under its own weight. 

Weight like unkempt Appalachian bonfires,

Whooshing, crackling mass transmuted to ash;

Like electric ovens conjure flan from custard batter,

Like pterodactyls, earth’s greenhouse, long warm, long life,

Blips of hot; quarks made from nothing,

Ex Nihilo buzzing, without shape. Connection so 

Transient, flitting in and out of ether, intangible, 

and it all cools down eventually. It all just goes so quick.