Market Arithmetic

He held the carton like a brittle prayer,

checking the stamp for a date that had passed.

He looked at the screen with a thousand-yard stare

counting the coins that he knew wouldn't last.

Forty cents more than the Tuesday before.

I saw the blue veins on the back of his hand,

as thin as the shells as he walked to the door,

leaving the protein he’d carefully planned.

It’s a cold kind of math in the fluorescent light,

where hunger is weighed by a nickel or dime.

We’re all just negotiating through the night,

buying our breath and a little more time.