Today I saw the face of what we’ve become: and it was buried in trash.
It was after the hospital. My hands still smelled of blood and iodine, as if I had just pulled death out of someone’s lungs. I stepped into the street not as a man walks, but as a shadow stumbles: worn, faceless, erased.
And then I saw them.
In the middle of the road.
Six souls. A family. Huddled together, not at the edge where the damned usually die, but in the heart of the road; as if they had taken position at the altar of some invisible God who no longer answers.
I should have turned away.
But curiosity is a wicked thing.
It’s not wonder; it’s hunger.
And sometimes, it eats you alive.
I walked toward them.
They were quiet. Too quiet.
A circle of bones and breath.
A meal.
Or what I thought was a meal.
A miracle, maybe, for a second.
But no.
It wasn’t food.
It was garbage.
A pile of trash.
Stinking. Festering. A graveyard of wrappers and waste.
And from that grave, they had scraped a few strands of spaghetti: cold, sticky, clinging to dirt as if ashamed to be eaten.
The father.
With hands no longer hands, but trembling instruments of despair.
He reached into the trash and lifted the food: not to eat, no, but to feed.
He fed it to his daughter.
A little girl.
Her eyes were too large for her face. Her lips, cracked. Her dress, torn like she had fallen through history itself.
And he fed her garbage, with love.
With tenderness.
As if it were soup.
As if it were gold.
He held it delicately.
Lifted it to her lips like a holy offering.
And she took it.
She chewed slowly.
Because in that moment, the universe reversed.
The sacred became foul.
The foul became sacred.
And I was no longer a witness;
I was a criminal.
How dare I exist?
How dare I walk upright while that child eats from the mouth of death?
I stood there, paralyzed by the weight of my own uselessness.
I, who have words, hands, and breath, did nothing.
And worse: I walked away.
But no, that’s a lie.
I never left.
I am still there.
— Dr. Ezzideen (@ezzingaza) July 26, 2025
kianamaiart
jbbartram-illu
andulkaphoto
dailybridgerton
theartofmadeline
stormborns
