I sit here in this cathedral of hushed breath and clicking keys, the air heavy with the scent of recycled oxygen and cheap coffee... it’s finals week and the silence is so dense you could carve your name into it. The girl across from me has skin like unblemished cream and she’s tapping a rhythm on her laptop that sounds like a heart failing to catch its beat. I’m seventy-six years old and my hands are maps of roads I should have taken, shaking just enough to make the margins of my notes look like a seismograph reading... (I wonder if she knows how much time she has left to be quiet). Then it happened. That visceral, violent BORBORYGMUS... a sound like a wet boot being pulled from a swamp. It wasn't just a growl; it was a demand from a body that has spent too many decades waiting for its turn to be fed properly. The acoustic properties of this room are unforgiving, turning a simple physiological contraction into a broadcast of my own poverty. I felt the sound travel up through the wood of the communal table, a low-frequency vibration that probably registered in the soles of their expensive sneakers... Every head turned.