TV Dinner

My mother and father are in their living room. My mother is watching a show about knees. She needs new knees. Just last week they completed her eyes. She keeps her knee caps by her side. In jars. On ice. My father is holding a bowl of discarded toes. My father inspects every digit and writes the findings in a diary. Shingles, he writes. Frostbite. “Each knee is like a closet,” my mother says. Gangrene, my father writes. Lawnmower, he adds. “If the closet becomes infected,” my mother says, “they have to fill the room with gel.”