Untitled
︎︎︎ C. Sandbatch
︎ Apr 14, 2026
Not only for bread. For a particular light
prisming through a stranger's window at night
makes their life seem livable and warm.
For the conversation that didn't happen.
For the word in another language that holds
a thing my own tongue has no room to keep—
the untranslatable, the almost-said, or
famished pause before a sentence finds its end.
I have eaten and been grateful and still
sat at the table with an open want
for my beloved, that food would not diminish,
that sleep delays & refuses to resolve.
Is the hunger the point of it all? Rumbling,
the engine under every act of reaching—
what keeps the hand extended in the dark,
expecting something learning not to close?
prisming through a stranger's window at night
makes their life seem livable and warm.
For the conversation that didn't happen.
For the word in another language that holds
a thing my own tongue has no room to keep—
the untranslatable, the almost-said, or
famished pause before a sentence finds its end.
I have eaten and been grateful and still
sat at the table with an open want
for my beloved, that food would not diminish,
that sleep delays & refuses to resolve.
Is the hunger the point of it all? Rumbling,
the engine under every act of reaching—
what keeps the hand extended in the dark,
expecting something learning not to close?