Friends think I am thin because I don’t eat.
They think I am dying of hunger 

and that’s why I drag food into my poems.
I can’t convince them I bake Yukon potatoes,

add sour cream, bury linguine in marinara,
stuff cabbage with chopped beef, 

bake green chocolate brownies.
Once I was like Kafka’s hunger artist.

Emaciated in the straw of his cage,
he said he would stop fasting

if his keeper fed him what he needed.
In this last stage of my life, I let go 

of my girlhood famine, 
no hugs no kisses, no “Luv you.”

The woman who eats and eats 
and stays skinny.
                        

A psychologist asks,
“What’s today’s date?
Who was the first president?” 
Good thing she doesn’t make me
count back from one hundred —
 I’d never be discharged.

In physical therapy, I lift one leg,
then another to help my broken ribs heal.
 “Don’t go on if it hurts too much,” 
the therapist says. It does.
I do best in the halls on a walker,
step by step, past the social room
where white haired men and women play bridge.

On PBS at night, I watch 
 “Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries.”
A young Filipino nurse brings my evening pills.
She has circles under her eyes;
her uniform’s badge is half pinned.

We debate whether Miss Fisher and the inspector
will ever sleep together.
When I sign the discharge form, she tells me,
“You’re the patient who’s kept me sane.”
                        

The bird feeder swings in a light breeze. 
Husband gone, it’s up to me to fill it.

At Ace Hardware, I ask the clerk 
which seed and suet to buy.

He carries the heavy bag of Millet to the car. 
My son brings it inside the house.

We sit together, listening to the red noise 
of a cardinal’s wings.