Hungry

A man kneels and begs like he’s the prodigal son. He’s down at the other end of the subway car—the end where there’s more bickering and flirting and sudden, high-pitched laughter.

I sit, here, opposite a sleeping man and feel excluded.

The man makes his way up the car. He passes and supplicates and passes and supplicates again.

“Please. I need money. I’m hungry. I need to eat,” he repeats, approaching every seated passenger.

I nestle close to the wall, shut my eyes, yawn, and pretend to sleep. He’s coming, I know. He’s coming, I see, peeking through a shutter of recently propped eyelashes.

I tell myself: I’m not a cold soul, I’m not a heartless conservative yearning for self-sufficiency and a mcmanshion in the suburbs…I’m a modern-day liberal. I pity this man.

But, what am I to do? There are so many like him. Some loud, some softly mumbling, some silently bowed. They each need a quarter here, a sandwich there, a bottle of water…And I can’t give it to them all. I really can’t.

His arrived—body hunched, hands cupped—at my seat.

“Please help,” came in a whisper, a faint addition to the “dhuh,” “dhuh” of the subway car colliding with the tracks and the “hah,” “hah” of several amused passengers.

“I don’t have anything,” I lied, grasping my bag like Judas at the Last Supper.