Hunger

He followed me to the bathroom with a Robert Frost book in his hands. I cleaned his bathroom while he read poetry to me.

Please, sir, read it again.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year

I cleaned Mr. Paul’s house every Saturday morning. I needed money to buy food while I studied at the university.

My body was 21 years old and his was 52. I was hungry.

We had an arrangement:

The kitchen was for history.
The living room was for politics.
The bathroom was reserved for poetry.
The bedroom for silence and bright yellow sheets.

Sometimes Mr. Paul treated me like a daughter. He fed me vegetarian meals. He gave me origami birds. He described an acid trip. He even tried to clarify Noam Chomsky for me. Other times, I just took orders from him to separate the colors and the whites.

One day I helped him fix his shirt’s collar. When I was done, he took my hand and kept it on his chest for a while. I felt myself on the landscape of his heart.

I left.

I went home because I knew the color oh his girlfriend’s toothbrush. I went home because I knew she slept on the right side of the bed.

I left with my hunger.

(please excuse the song,  my jersey homeboy, bruce, understands)