Writing prompt: The Color of Hunger
Hunger is a dingy black, once shiny and new like a Lexus in the driveway, sparkling and attracting every eye in the neighborhood, now faded and sun damaged. You can see where the draw used to be, where the beauty lay, the smooth leather interior and everyone wanted a piece of the action. Now it sits forgotten, the yard overgrown and littered with parts from machines nobody can recall.
Hunger reeks of bile and urine and baser things that aren’t polite to talk about in mixed company. Crude brown and yellow and green thrown together, a bruise on milk white skin. It burns with every touch, hurts the eyes to look at it. It’s rude to stare at it, but part of you has to look at it, a burning truck on the interstate, a body smashed into the pavement.
Hunger is not beautiful. It is a dark red gash on the forehead of humanity, blood dripping down a gaunt face, eyes shut against the hot onslaught. He doesn’t want to see it, doesn’t want to acknowledge its existence, but there it stays, bleeding heavily, starting to go sour and smell as the body does its best to heal. It does not want to be ignored. I cannot be ignored. It is slowly killing him, and he doesn’t want to see it.
Hunger is grey, ash, thunderstorm clouds before the lightning strikes and illuminates the land. It is sickly and dying, but holding on for dear life, unable to give up because it has to get better eventually. It just has to.
Hunger is a red, yellow, black, white. Precious in His sight. What sort of just and loving god would allow his people to suffer in such a way, such a slow and agonizing death? There is no justice. And god is a cruel bitch with a sick sense of humor.
Hunger is a deep purple, worn by royalty, by the rich and famous, in order to appear gentle and kind. Seeming to care about people they would have stepped upon in order to get atop that glorious white pedestal. We know your suffering, and we give a damn, they proclaim with somber faces, hard lines of mouths set perfect from years of training in the mirror. We care, they say, wearing the sash of hunger crossed with the bright yellow sash of self-satisfaction.
Hunger is sky blue.
-Mai
Hunger reeks of bile and urine and baser things that aren’t polite to talk about in mixed company. Crude brown and yellow and green thrown together, a bruise on milk white skin. It burns with every touch, hurts the eyes to look at it. It’s rude to stare at it, but part of you has to look at it, a burning truck on the interstate, a body smashed into the pavement.
Hunger is not beautiful. It is a dark red gash on the forehead of humanity, blood dripping down a gaunt face, eyes shut against the hot onslaught. He doesn’t want to see it, doesn’t want to acknowledge its existence, but there it stays, bleeding heavily, starting to go sour and smell as the body does its best to heal. It does not want to be ignored. I cannot be ignored. It is slowly killing him, and he doesn’t want to see it.
Hunger is grey, ash, thunderstorm clouds before the lightning strikes and illuminates the land. It is sickly and dying, but holding on for dear life, unable to give up because it has to get better eventually. It just has to.
Hunger is a red, yellow, black, white. Precious in His sight. What sort of just and loving god would allow his people to suffer in such a way, such a slow and agonizing death? There is no justice. And god is a cruel bitch with a sick sense of humor.
Hunger is a deep purple, worn by royalty, by the rich and famous, in order to appear gentle and kind. Seeming to care about people they would have stepped upon in order to get atop that glorious white pedestal. We know your suffering, and we give a damn, they proclaim with somber faces, hard lines of mouths set perfect from years of training in the mirror. We care, they say, wearing the sash of hunger crossed with the bright yellow sash of self-satisfaction.
Hunger is sky blue.
-Mai