Happy Birthday, Adriana Poem by Louise Marie DelSanto

At a birthday party
half past the hour
in another state
I watch the pizza
and cake being
served by teens with
plastic gloves. Cups
of ice cream stacked
in rows of threes and pitchers
with an unknown sweetness.
.
Happy Birthday, Adriana

My pancreas does not
thank you for all the visual
and dietary stimulation
of your day -
a cerebral rush
of sugar, and the noise
above the lethal level

Happy Birthday, Adriana

Across the table,
a Korean woman
telling me she only ate
rice with vegetables,
that she had Diabetes
15 years and aches in her
shoulders with pains
down her legs.

Pour me
a glass of iced water,
she tells me. It is all
I can have.
The cold water sliding
down into the darkness
of her papercup.

Happy Birthday, Adriana.