I. Am. Hungry.

I am hungry. No breakfast feels sturdy enough, hearty enough to get me through to the mornings these days. I have tried everything, including not eating till lunch. I am hungry. Hungry for nourishment that is fulfilling and sustainable and yet, I have zero energy to
make it, fix it, do it
I am hungry. So hungry and yet, I stand in front of half my students masked up, the other half in perfect little squares on the screen that blink back at me, and keep going. Suppressing my human bodily needs and yet punishing it with thoughts of judgment
Judgment that cripples me, stifling my ability to choose a meal that nourishes, feeds, fulfills, soothes because should food do all those things or only one or two? What is food to me really?
I
Am
Hungry.
Every morning, hungry for more
Requiring comfort and energy
Yearning for
A satisfaction that continues to slip through my fingers.
So I stay hungry, empty
A well dried up left in my grandmother’s backyard,
Thinking about the days when hunger was not so complicated
Chewing on those chicken bones marinated in naynamma’s chicken curry
From a time so long ago, that my shifted mind barely remembers.
I am hungry.