Not sure this qualifies as free verse, so I'll call it prose. For the Contest of Edward Ibeh:
title chosen: A Hunger Unfed/ Date: March 26, 2024
Many a hunger goes unfed. Some adjust and live with it, finding satisfaction in suitable activities. Others push that hunger down, deeper and deeper, filling the empty hole inside themselves with dangerous addictions that take the place for what they hunger for. Starved for the attention or love they never received as children, voracious some become. They fill the void with things like gambling, ***********, drugs or alcohol. Each addiction follows its victim through life like a dark abiding shadow. Some, needing control of their own lives, literally starve themselves of food deliberately, becoming anorexic or bulimic and vomiting their food back up. The remedy for normalcy becomes nearly impossible for them to achieve. For others, life is boring or unfulfilling. Ravenous as wolves, they stuff their faces. A paradox is this – for they are not feeding physical hunger. They need guidance and understanding, and the will-power to resist an over-abundance of food, which some mistakenly believe they hunger for. Too many hunger for money or material possessions. They cannot satisfy their cravings, and this may lead to crime or even murder. Look around and see the many people hungering for what. . . they may not even know. How sad is a society when what’s considered harmful or immoral becomes the norm for what we choose to engorge ourselves upon. Like the swollen bellies of children in third world countries, the substitutions for what many of us hunger for will become the death of us.
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