The body knows before the mind—
how the stomach clenches in a dry fist,
how the throat learns to swallow absence
as if it were a meal.
In the year I learned to live with less,
I measured time in what I didn’t have:
a breakfast skipped, a dinner postponed,
the ribs’ quiet math beneath my skin.
The wind was a banquet,
and I let it fill me,
let the sky’s wide blue plate
mock my need.
They say hunger makes you sharper.
That the starving fox will sniff out a buried feast
where the satisfied beast
smells only earth.
I want to tell you—I found something.
Not in the lack, but in the looking.
Not in the gnawing, but in the knowing
that I could bite the air and still survive.