The Salt on the Tongue

Hunger is a quiet teacher. It arrives without invitation, stripping away the pretense of the day until only the essential remains. We sit. We wait. We reach for the simple sustenance that anchors us to the earth.

There is a specific grace in the act of eating. The tearing of bread. The resistance of the crust. The way the juices stain the fingertips, a reminder that we are biological, tethered to the soil and the sea. We forget that we are made of these things. We forget that to be alive is to consume the world, to take it into ourselves, to let it become our blood and our bone.

Then, the plate is empty. The conversation resumes. The world rushes back in to fill the hollow space where the appetite once lived.

What is left when the meal is finished?

Catherine Ferraz has captured this fleeting necessity in her image titled Steak Baguette from Catherine’s Cafe. She finds the intersection of appetite and the afternoon sun. Does the taste linger longer than the sight of it?