I got out of my car with the covered dish.
Casseroles
pies
a platter of cold cuts —
it’s what our mothers and their mothers have always done.

I climbed the two cinderblock steps to the screen door of the double-wide
and started to knock on the frame,
but she had heard me drive up
and was watching through the ripped mesh screen.

“We thought you might not feel much like cooking,” I said.

She opened the screen door and took the casserole,
dark circles under her eyes
matching shadows creeping over her teeth.
Pale skin streched tight over fragile cheekbones.

“I’d ask you in but I gotta get to work,” she said
in pajama pants and an over-sized Dixie Chics tee shirt.

She looked past me down the dusty driveway.
A Peace Lily, wilting in the heat 
adorned with a pink teddy bear 
its funeral ribbon fading in the sun.

“Go on. Take yourself a plant, ” she said.
“I kill everything.”