Tonight, I want to break into the fortune cookie factory
armed with millions of tiny rectangular papers
that I’d surreptitiously slip into the thin folded wafers.
You will say five nice things in the next hour, says one.
And, You’ll bake something nice for your neighbor.
Every fortune will predict a generosity of spirit.
A grudge you’ve been gripping will disappear.
Gratitude for the smallest things will flood you.
And on the back, it will acknowledge that to make
any number lucky, you’ll simply write a check
using that number to a local charity—
the more zeroes you add to the number,
the luckier that number will be.
Or, perhaps a better idea:
fill each cookie with a blank slip of paper—
some small scrap of potential that invites every person
to write their own fortune, lets them feel
like the author of their own destiny. In fact, here.
Here’s a pen. And a very small white page.
You don’t even need the cookie.