Bread on the Concrete

The sandwich slipped, slow and soft,

between cracked lines of a sidewalk map.

Half-buried in a scuff of grime,

a stray cigarette butt watched it lie.

I bent, fingers sticky with shame,

licked the grit from the bread’s torn edge.

Taste of dirt and cold street air,

a hunger that knows no polite plea.

Concrete’s bitter underbelly,

scraped and eaten without a thought—

that day the ground was my plate,

and hunger, my forgotten guest.