You slowly peel the aluminum foil at your burrito’s top, fully knowing that foil once torn can never be restored.

The white tortilla wrap greets you with its wrinkled, pug nose. Greet the pug nose, welcome the pug nose.

You take your first, big bite, for only large bites fill every cell of your mouth and cheek lining with salsa, sour cream, guacamole, bean … Hold it, feel your cheeks puff out as the taste enters your cheek membranes. Don’t swallow yet, that time will come.

Breathe in the smoky, chipotle steam; it too belongs to your burrito. As the saliva mixes with tomatillo sauce you deliberately gulp down your first bite, feeling your hungered stomach cells expand with the rush of Tex-Mex glucose.

Continue, with each big bite different from the previous one. Not one cheek-filling bite is like the other, each is different, each has its own moment in time, its own meaning. A chunk of tomato tips off the edge of your burrito and falls to the cement sidewalk. Accompany that tomato on its journey—it will never travel it again.

As the foil folds back, and the bites fill your grateful stomach, you have reached the final folds of tortilla, salsa and sour cream. Fajita veggies are gone so is the guacamole. You look up and breath in misty air. This is the moment. This is your final bite. You take a mental snapshot, scan your body from head to toe in wonderment that each cell, each organ works together to keep you alive, and take your final bite.

As the tortilla turns to mush in your mouth, you feel your jaw cracking with each bite (mental note: make a dentist appointment about the jaw). You swallow, and, like a leaf floating out of sight down a wooden stream, your burrito is gone.

Author’s note: This meditation is intended to be light-hearted, but not mocking. I am trying to be more mindful, an effort that is both rocky and worth the effort.