Confidence is a costume. You learn to disguise
anxiety behind brass buttons and the designer label
of one good shirt, its white collar regularly laundered
by shameful necessity. You never beg, but trick or treat
with such educated syntax that no one knows
how often off-brand crackers and sad, cheap soup must
tame the growling, monstrous hunger in your waning
gibbous stomach between paychecks.
They assume you feast on caviar. Not
the last scrape of peanut butter surgically extracted
from the jar and disappointingly spread across
scarcely half of the last cracker, already stale—
an appetizer to be followed by no fairytale dessert
except for the distant, delicious taste
of hope.
Colored pencil on colored paper by Alison Deland Scott
Smoky Quartz 