Off the Floor

I dropped the toast on the kitchen floor

and for a second I just looked, and more

than anything I was aware of hunger,

of my stomach making sounds like thunder,

of how long I'd been ignoring the need

to eat, to fuel myself, to feed

this body that's been complaining for hours.

So when it landed I felt the power

of hunger override everything else—

the shame, the disgust, myself,

the part of me that knows there are rules

about eating food that's been on the floor. Tools

of desperation, I guess. Nobody was watching.

Nobody was there to stop me from catching

myself doing this small, embarrassing thing.

So I picked it up. The butter was still warm. I ate. This

is what it means to be alone,

to do things when nobody's known

to be looking, to break rules

because there's nobody to enforce them. Tools

of survival that taste like shame

mixed with butter, and I'm not sure I can blame

myself for being hungry enough to forget

about hygiene, about dignity. I ate it yet

I'm still here, still hungry, still alone,

and the floor is still the floor, and I've known

for a long time that sometimes desperation

wins. And maybe that's okay. Maybe that's the sensation

of being alive—just hungry enough to not care.