Eve Never Counted Calories

by Heather Cadenhead

For lunch, I ate a garden

salad. Nothing that clings

to the hips and makes a home,

especially a forever home—

where men plant fruit trees

and watch them grow.

In storybook Bibles, it is

a Red Delicious that fills 

Eve’s outstretched hand.

For me, it is cup after cup

of black coffee. I swallow

September, leaving mist-slick

apples to rot in leaf-crisp graves.

I tell you that I’m only planning

for the possibility of famine, but

secretly, I wonder if I’m willing it.

Tonight, I’ll fill your plate twice

before I open my mouth. I’ll taste

what crumbs of chiaroscuro

fall, counting my abstinence

an honest day’s work.

---

Luci Shaw once wrote that she liked the way Heather Cadenhead saw things—"not just with her eyes, but

with all her senses focused." A native Tennessean, Heather’s poems and essays are published or forthcoming

in Inkwell, The Rabbit Room, St. Katherine Review, and other publications. She publishes a monthly

newsletter, Firelight, via Substack. Her poetry has received Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations,

as well as a New Plains Review Editorial Prize.