My friend is a Weight Watcher’s master,
knows the points for every food on earth:
2 for a banana, 52 for a Thin Mint Blizzard.
How quickly the counting consumes
her every thing: socks weigh .5 pounds,
glasses .4 ounces, for every two glances
from a 30 year old subtract 8 points.
Single digit pants the goal, even though
today’s size six = a 10 from 20 years ago.
My counting is more approximate than that—
a handful of Cheetos = 2 Cheetos = 2 points—
which might explain my figure more
approximate than hers.

I have other friends who also obsessively count:
days until retirement, swipes to find a date,
cancer cells growing until a body tips.
I can no longer count on one hand the friends
calculating their final days. If two friends leave
on separate trains four hours apart, how long
before their paths collide if one
has lung cancer with an optimistic outlook
and the other a brain tumor with suicidal
tendencies? And how fast must I be
traveling to watch these trains derail?
All this counting leaves me derailed,
heavy with the weight of escape:
9 points for a gin and tonic, 90 more
minutes until dawn, waiting on 13 prayers
to be answered, one way or another.

Cathryn Cofell is an Appleton poetry activist with two full-length collections including Stick Figure With Skirt, winner of the 2019 Main Street Rag Poetry Award, plus six chapbooks, numerous other awards and a music/poetry CD called Lip. www.cathryncofell.com