Hunger Pains

I stepped off the 7 train and onto the platform, lugging my leftovers from Second Street Bakery. Two large, fluffy pancakes oozing with blueberries and saturated in melted maple butter were waiting for me. It takes a certain level of commitment to a food if you are going to traipse around the city with it afterward rather than allowing it to be swept up by some busboy, and I had just that level of commitment for these pancakes. I carried them from the Lower East Side all the way to Queens to see James, with only a little less protection a new mother would have carrying her baby. And now here I was still holding onto them as I waited on the platform for the 4 train to take me home.

I looked up from my lap and saw a man walking across the platform. A grey frizzed beard hung over his wrinkled, leather like skin, and the leather like skin looked as though it was simply draped over his bones with nothing else between them. His hands shook uncontrollably as he staggered his way through the sea of subway passengers and I was fixated on him for whatever reason. He approached the trash can and began to bury the upper half of his body in it, searching for food - of which I had tucked safely under my arm.

“Give him your food.” Nagged the predictable Catholic guilt that seemed to haunt me.

“Absolutely not.” I silently muttered back, then looked the other way to avoid entertaining any feelings of remorse for this man. My heart was already feeling more alert after my afternoon with James and these pancakes were supposed to comfort me, in a true eat away your feelings fashion. We were ending things - ending things before they had a chance to begin. I was not going to allow my heart to feel even more, so I plugged in my headphones and blasted whatever song came first. Something about stubborn love, of course, and I’m right back on his couch in his living room. His head resting against the top of mine; the two of us each too scared or stubborn to admit any dreams we have in one another. Only two nights before we were tangled up with each other in drunken kisses, clutching onto one another’s silhouettes, as we surrendered to the feelings we had tiptoed around all summer long. We did not say much today as we watched the movie, just our breath breathing deeply against each other’s shoulders, in a pure sort of appreciation of the moment. I left without kissing him goodbye and there was an unspoken acceptance that this would be the last time we would have one of these encounters together. We were discarding any future hopes of truly being together.

I glance over at the scraggly man again. This time, I cannot help but feel. I walk up to him, as if my heart is orchestrating my body without my mind’s permission, to hand over the box of my beloved leftovers to him. I placed my hand on his protruding shoulder in an attempt to meet the person underneath the judgements I had formed, and he shuttered like a frightened dog. He quickly snatched the bag from me without either of us saying a word. His unsteady hands began to claw the box open as an animal might. Upon opening it he managed to shovel in a bit of pancakes from the handful he took, but then immediately dropped the rest of the pancakes onto the grimy subway platform. Wasted. He then stomped away from me, muttering curses.

I didn’t know whether I wanted to scream at this man or stand there and cry. My heart sunk to a new depth watching him; not because I hated seeing my precious food go uneaten, but because it hurt to see someone who was hungry enough to go scouring the trash can for food drop the one thing that could feed him. He was so far gone that he no longer knew how to hold onto his food. The wind from the approaching train chipped away at those precious pancakes lying on the platform. I glanced up to the train’s window halting in front of me and see a slight reflection of that old man in myself. I grasp at love and I shake with fear when I come close to the entrance of it. I don’t know how to hold onto it. We are really not that different he and I. Each of us hungry for something but unsure of how to get it. He took one bite and tossed out the rest. I took one night and threw out the future.