*

Maybe eating tacos wasn’t cheating on my diet.
Maybe going on a diet was cheating on my tacos.
Tacos are so delicious; no one can escape the taste.
For many of us, the idea of healthy eating equals bland food,
calorie counting, and general joylessness.
Or we see the task of great cooking for ourselves
as complicated and expensive, but it doesn’t have to be that way.
Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes
a wonderful stroke of luck indeed.
*
*

Rufino Porfirio, age 33, hails from Guerrero, Mexico, close to Acapulco. He arrived in the U.S. in 2007. He never imagined he would be able to speak English. He loves reading, and he wants to get better at writing so he can write books on his life and on politics. James McMenamin is his teacher at the Queens Public Library’s Elmhurst Adult Learning Center. His essay “My First Job” was published in LR17.