Assignment #20 -- Write about the color of hunger

The color of hunger?
What do I know
about the color of hunger?
I have never gone to bed hungry
a night of my life
When it wasn't by choice.
Ask me about the color of love
or even the color of rage
and I might
perhaps
have something to say.
But what do I know
about the color of hunger?

Hunger is a black beast
It stalks the desolate places
Where the poor
Who have nothing
Search through garbage cans
For the scraps people like me cast away.
It is a ravenous gnawing hopelessness
That preys on the weak
In a land of scandalous abundance.
What do I know of hunger?
I who have spent most of my life
Trying to curb my appetites
To avoid excess weight?
Hunger is a stranger to me
I have seen it in the faces of children
And old men on the side of the road
Holding "Will Work for Food" signs.
But it isn't something I know
Not intimately.
So how am I supposed to write
About what color is hunger?

Skipping ahead since the last several prompts weren't applicable or were really boring....

Prompt #19 -- Begin a story with the words, "There once was a chance I didn't take..."

There once was a chance I didn't take, a chance to spend a summer basking in the sun in Greece. A chance to spend three months living in a culture not my own but with the advantage of a friend by my side to help me bridge the gap. I've often wondered what would have happened if I'd gone with him that summer.

It was the summer of 1990. I was a senior in college attending Memphis State University. Sean was my crazy Greek musician friend. My boyfriend and I spent hours at Sean's apartment with a group of friends that gathered most weekends (and many weeknights) around Sean's avacado green upright piano. I remember those nights with fondness even now. Sean would play and those of us that were inclined woulds sing or play along. I remember sitting perched atop the piano like an old time saloon girl belting out "Mack the Knife". It was at the end of one of these lazy spring evenings that Sean asked me to go with him to Greece for the summer.

I remember staring at him in amazement. "It'll all be paid for. All you have to do is come. I do USO stuff all over Europe. Come with me." There was nothing asked of me other than my company. But something would not let me say yes. Even as someone told me he'd support me if I wanted to go. Harold would have let me go. He trusted me that much. He trusted me implicitly and he trusted Sean enough to grant me the freedom to go.

I couldn't imagine dealing with the reaction of the families when I announced I'd be spending the summer in Greece with another man. I couldn't imagine finding words to explain to my mother that Sean and I were "just friends" but that I was going to spend the summer with him in another country. I couldn't imagine Harold having to explain why he "let me go". In the end, I was too afraid to lose everything in life that truly mattered to me, even for the "opportunity of a lifetime." I said no.

Sean had a seizure in Greece that summer. In the midst of the seizure he walked out of the post exchange with something in his hand that he hadn't yet paid for. They didn't believe him when he tried to explain about the epilepsy. I've often wondered if that would have happened if I had been there with him. I've often thought that if that hadn't happened he would never have had the surgery that left him a shell of himself, robbed of his short term memory and suffering grand mal seizures instead of the petit mal ones he'd had in the past. I've often looked at that summer and wondered, if I had gone with him would everything be different.

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that made all the difference." The wisom of Robert Frost. We cannot predict the outcomes of roads not taken. Regret is an exercise in futility. And so I will never know what could have been. My life is good and I am happy. But there once was a chance I did not take.