There never was such a woman for losing things:
her glasses, books, teeth, oh God, she’d lost her
toys, her youth, her honor and a war,
lost her looks, her money and her mind.
What little she’d kept, we found
stashed away in plastic-
capped cans and jars,
wrapped in tinfoil:
a withered carrot, pliable as clothesline;
a dab of cottage cheese, blue green, furred;
a few grains of curried rice;
one stony doughnut
that outlived her muttering dotage.
A bed; two rachitic chairs; a table
with half a bottle of Jim Beam on it
and a deck of cards.
We remembered the occasional clink
and the steady plack plack
plack through the thin walls;
was it solitaire she played,
or did her limp cards foretell this particular fortune, this utter loss,
over and over?