The Woman Who Lives without Bread

by Anne Myles

The woman who lives without bread
sits alone in an echoing room inside.

Thoughts tick across the floorboards
in a house where little else is made.

Her hands are folded together. Her fingers
press into the softness of each palm.

She has no family to bake challah for;
she lives in the no and no that have rolled

into the center of her life. Turning aside 
from the wheat that makes her body

go to war against itself. Turning her gaze
from each feast of sugary whiteness.

An image of her mother’s diamond ring
flashing in dough pulls at her thoughts;

she cradles it, then offers it to the burning
as she has offered herself to hunger,

and to some God that might sate it. Her wrists
strain as they raise the book of prayers.

Her chest thrums with breath, with the old song
that rises to fill her empty mouth

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Anne Myles is the author of Late Epistle (Headmistress Press, 2023), and her work has appeared in numerous journals. She is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Northern Iowa and holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Originally from New York, she now lives in Greensboro, NC.