TRAGIC Poem: Devil’s Food Cake, by Mia Lindenburg

Kathy cuts into her slice of Devil’s Food Cake
sticky on the hospital tray
as she tells the table why she wants to die,

“There’s no point anymore,”
she says.

Her back stabs and
her feet ache
and she can’t even walk,
stuck in this damn chair.

When she was a little girl,
she was grandaddy’s favorite.

On Christmas morning, her stocking would grow so heavy
its stitches would bend
like a fishing net full of tuna.

And on her fifth birthday,
Grandaddy gave her a pretty wooden box

with ballerinas painted on its sides and
sweets and chocolates filling it.

Straight out of high school, she married Dan,

her sweetheart and prom date,
who cooked three meals a day for her,
even on his lunch break.

Neither of them had God,
but their matrimony was made
under Latter-Day Saints,
so their children would have a friend.

And so the years went by,
Kathy and Dan had their little house
outside of Bellevue,
to avoid the city rush

and their children grew up with a surrogate God
and Dan kept on cooking his meals
and Kathy let the days pass her by
and now she was here with us

in a hospital wing that served three meals a day
at the price of freedom.

Kathy told me she was a coke fiend
so I tried to swap stories
and she smiled and told me
she meant “the kind that comes in cans”

her life had been spent on something sweet
but blandness seeped into it

and I guess she wanted something new
that she found in those pills

I’d never faltered,
I knew what I wanted,
and even if it killed me,
I’d die happy

but Kathy’s hopes were empty,
she chased sugar,
never knowing what she really craved,
and someday soon, it’d lead her to the grave.

I made it out in twelve days,
with a sign off from the DA,
and Kathy stayed inside.

in her broken chair and her ratty clothes
still I picture her

with three meals prepared,
and Devil’s Food Cake after supper.