The day Daddy died
I found myself alone in the farmhouse
and I was like Samson when he awoke
to Delilah’s “The Philistines are on you!”
Then the ropes of new habits –
weighing 3 oz. of tuna, 2 oz. of cheese
apportioning rice, or potatoes or pasta
in meager ½ cup servings, eating my 1-oz. slice of toast
with a precise teaspoon of butter and honey
washed down with ½ cup of blue milk – snapped
and I clawed through cupboards
for prunes and baking chocolate and raisins and nuts
dug in the freezer for old cake and ice-cream and blueberries,
hard as marbles,
checked every opened box and package
ravaged every tin
until the waist-band of my new
size 12s cut into my skin
and there was room for no more
but still I was hollow inside.
Violet Nesdoly 