I am a sick burrito...I am a spiteful burrito. I sit here wishing death on my lifelong companion: a delicately crafted taco. Customers passing our display feast their eyes upon her beauty, and who can blame them? She is curvy, crunchy, bursting with juicy flavor. I, on the other hand, am a meager pile of beans swaddled in a bland wheat tortilla, give or take a few shavings of halfway-melted cheese. I am undeserving of their lustful affection.

I ponder the severity of my unworthiness. I lack the crispy, comforting, desirable qualities of a taco. What is my purpose in life—to make people fat? To be carried as the offending baggage around hips for countless years? All this, and I wonder that few are willing to accept the consequences that come with a foil-wrapped burrito.

    If only I could be as beautiful as she. Her thin, sun-kissed shell catches the eye over my pale, freckled wrap. Where my form is lumpy and misshapen, hers is crisp and svelte. Her warm aroma drifts throughout the restaurant, blessing all of God’s creations. Simply put, she is a carefully engineered masterpiece: the Kardashian of fast foods. Is there a cook in the house?! I beg you, give me a surgical procedure; fry me into a taco; shape my limp, ample body!

    It is not long before a customer fixes his eye on my companion. Long have I yearned for a customer to gaze at me as he does her. She continues to rest demurely on our tray, silently basking in his attention. He runs his tongue across lips parched for modern-day manna.

    The customer signals a cashier and gestures lovingly to my bewitching companion. The cashier nods and reaches for the tray upon which we rest. What happens next makes time seem as if the clock is ticking backwards. I warily note the unsteadiness that grips the cashier’s hand as she reaches for our tray. Time crawls by as the back of her hand brushes roughly against the tray. Her eyes widen in surprise as it wobbles precariously. I feel smothered by my wheat tortilla and desperately want to scream, but my abiotic anatomy does not allow me to do so. Suddenly the tray is falling, falling, and I see a light—and there it is, the end of my existence as a burrito. It’s for the best.

Yet it is not a light, but the cold, stony floor of the restaurant. Burrito, meet Tile. The world is silent for several moments, and then it isn't. Life resumes with full vigor, and people crowd the scene of tragedy to analyze casualties and offer words of comfort.

    The moments after the most excruciating experience of my short life find me in pieces. Tenderly my remains are scooped off of the tray into a pair of warm hands and re-wrapped. With little concern as to the fate of my companion—I have only just been wishing death upon her—I glance over to see how the devastatingly lovely taco is faring.

And there she is—crushed into a thousand pieces. She was beautiful, but unrealistically fragile. She is nothing without her shell—now she lays on the floor as nothing but a handful of trodden crumbs and lukewarm meat. Elements once blended together beautifully now are strewn across the floor, desolate without their complements. The illusion is over.

The customer’s reaction to his taco-to-be’s fate is anything but pleasant. His lips purse into a grimace and he turns away in disgust. Desire and purchase are forgotten. Yet he suddenly spins around, his eyes resting thoughtfully on me. His lips turn up into a smile as his eyes rove over me. I am no taco, he sees, but I am appealing in my own way. I have fed peasants and kings alike. I am a burrito, more than a simple tortilla and beans; I reside here today because of an economic principle called demand. Demand because I, despite excessive calories and incompetent components, am wanted.

Again the customer signals for the cashier, myself now the subject of his gesticulation, the only remaining inhabitant of the tray. The cashier gently blankets me with a thin layer of foil and I finally land triumphantly in the hands of my beloved master.

End the impossible standards set by society. All burritos are beautiful.