sushi-joint iced tea in poetry

The iced tea was redolent of vanilla,
reeking of vanilla,
bleeding oozing vanilla
but barely tasted of it at all.
It was WEIRD.

I spent the whole night just wondering about it
wondering how that works
how you could make a tea like that and
moreover why.

Then I realized
life is like that
beautiful and weird and
terrible in its weird beauty
inexplicable to us little creatures
without a peek behind the curtain
I resolved myself to just have enjoyed
that strange strange tea and
went to sleep.

Still.
I woke up once that night
asking out-loud to no one else
in my otherwise empty bed
“cardamom? could that have been cardamom?”

I mean, isn’t that we spend our whole lives asking?
Some metaphoric hint of meaning that we can’t quite grasp?
What if there’s a God up there?
Would she have dated me if I’d just asked?
Where do we come from, how long do we last?
Cardamom?
Was that cardamom?

It wasn’t even so much that it was good
it’s that it was interesting.
Interesting was better than good.
It’d make a good epitaph
I’m sure that it would.

Interesting better than good.
Cardamom?
Cardamom?
Cardamom?