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The Hungry

Gaunt was the first word that came to mind when I looked at his face. And it was, but in a tactfully haunted kind of way. In fact he looked good taking hefty drags of his cigarette, greasy hair awash with wind.

I'd forgotten how much I missed him, how long it had been since his turbulent being had last swept through my life. I hadn't seen him since grandpa's memorial service eight months before. I routinely forget the kind of havoc such a swath of time can take on a person, and I knew full well that the expanse hadn't been particularly kind to either of us. Siblings, born from the exact same place by the two same people, and yet we're more aptly strangers than family. And I wonder, what he must think in that moment, seeing the world through the eyes of a nineteen-year-old. I ponder what the content of his dreams must be and whether he longs for escape as deeply as I still do. In some disparate reality of languid sleeplessness, I hear our thoughts collide, climbing a path together toward a shared end. There are visions of desert landscapes here, and wasted afternoons by the lapping sea. Sand-caked feet kick at broken shells while nearby vendors collect their wares and set forth toward home. In this place, we are twins pacing the surface of possibility with little hope of owning it.


We know exactly what the other is searching for, and the breezes tempt our stomachs with the scent of meals we cannot taste.


So we starve in silence, and we allow the hunger to linger like the smoke that curls from the cherry tip of another cigarette.

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'A word after a word after a word is power.' 

-Margaret Atwood

The English language was the only instrument I was ever meant to play in this life. Stories and poems are a way of letting the air into rooms that have long been left unvisited. Whatever may have brought you here today, I hope the journey resonates with you.

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