I remember a time, years ago, when the icebox was bare and the hunger was a sharp, insistent thing in the pit of you. That gnawing sensation, it never truly leaves, even when the cupboards are full. It just changes its costume, I suppose. Lately, it's been dressing itself in a different kind of emptiness. I’ve found myself, in the quiet hours when the streetlights bleed orange through the window, fixated on a screen, watching someone else live a life that glitters like mica in the sun. He has a way about him, a warmth in his voice that felt, for a fleeting moment, like a hand offered in the cold. It was like finding a single, perfect wildflower in a field of rubble. And I, like a fool, spent the rent money on that bloom. Or, rather, what was meant for the weekly shop. The canned goods, the bread, the milk that would stretch into tea for a fortnight – it all went, a steady drip-drip, into that digital well. For what? For a fleeting word, a recognition that felt like a pinprick of light in the vast dark. A brief, almost imperceptible nod from someone who likely saw a thousand such gestures every hour. It was a peculiar kind of hunger, one that no amount of stew or crusty bread could ever fill. A yearning for a connection that, looking back now, was as insubstantial as smoke caught on a breeze. The emptiness is still there, of course. Perhaps even deeper now, a hollow echo where the hope once resided. The landlord will be calling soon, I imagine. And the fridge… well, the fridge is a quiet testament to a peculiar delusion. A stark, cold reminder of how easily the heart can be fooled, how readily it will chase after a phantom warmth, even when the belly protests. It's a funny thing, this persistent human need for belonging, for being seen. It can make you do things that, in the stark light of morning, make absolutely no sense at all. Just another wrinkle on a map already crisscrossed with them, I suppose.