Angele Toomey Poetry

I caught a moment of the midday news today. Due to the increasing cost of living and the ongoing impact of covid-19 on segments of the economy, child poverty is rising again.

All afternoon I’ve been thinking about what it’s like to be the child who goes to bed hungry, who struggles to concentrate in school, who feels isolated from peers with no understanding of what goes on when the front door closes. Not that you’d wish them to.

There are some hungers that can never be forgotten. There are some types of hollowness that, once created, can never be filled.

The next time you are at the supermarket please put something nice in the donation box of your local food bank.

Explaining the hollowness
The hollowing feeling
is a muscle memory
become real.
The physical and emotional:
indistinguishable.
The hollow is darkness
It reminds me I cannot 
look back, go back.

The deeply buried hunger
of a remote singularity
Told to be small and insignificant
Whose reflection is me.
The hunger for food
for love
to learn
to be free.

A hollow feeling that 
never quite leaves.
There is always a feeling 
of being set apart:
of being out of place
not being of this time and space,
not being enough, 
or too much.

Even with a full plate
the hollow feeling
is there
it gnawing away
as a muscle memory
I cannot escape.