"After Dinner" by Phillip Levine

This poem is about a woman who, after eating dinner, sits down and decides to read a book. As she's reading she nods off a few times but then is startled when she hears a noise from her backyard. She opens her door and steps on her porch, staring at her shadow, then later follows it as if it were a real person. When she goes to follow her shadow, she finds herself along, wringing her hands because of the cold.

She feels a presence with her when she is outside. Some say what she's feeling is fear, others say loneliness or simply that she's just sleep walking.

For me, I think that she has maybe lost someone recently and when she hears the noise coming from outside, she secretly hopes it's whoever she has lost. I think at some point we all feel that sense of loneliness. We wish that the person you miss would magically appear infront of you and make everything better. I think this woman's motivation for even going outside was from a sense of loneliness. Because if she were scared, why would be go outside where she would be vulnerable to it? It seeems like she went outside looking for someone, then realized when she was out there that the person she wanted to see really wasn't there and she was alone.