The Chart

Says fifty-four-year-old obese Hispanic female — I wonder if they mean the one with long black braids, Peruvian, who sells tamales at the farmers’ market, tells me I’m too thin, I better eat; or is she the Dominican with too much rouge and almond eyes at the dry cleaner’s who must have been so beautiful in her youth; or maybe she’s the Cuban lady drunk on grief who I’ve seen half-asleep, alone as if that bench were only hers, the park her home at last; or else the Mexican who hoards the littered papers she collects and says they are her “documents”; if not, it could be that Colombian drug addict whose Spanish, even when she’s high, is perfect; or maybe it’s the one who never says exactly where she’s from, but who reminds me of my grandmother, poor but refined, lace handkerchief balled up in her plump hand, who died too young from a condition that some doctor, nose in her chart, overlooked.