The man bends forward in his rickety chair,

elbows leaning heavily on his knees.

Eyebrows drooping,

closed eyes resting,

his worry lined face tells of tougher times,

something I can’t begin to understand.

But not just his face,

his hunger-pang frame clothed in a tattered shirt

and ripped pants that didn’t even reach to his ankles

paint me an all too clear picture of the destitution

all Americans endured through during that time.

His bare feet bear his weight on the hard, dirt ground,

the cold seeping in through the soles of his feet into his bones.

He shivers constantly and hunches closer to the flickering fire,

the guttering flames barely grazing the ancient, rusted iron grate,

casting an unsteady glow across his shadowy form,

barely warming his frozen body.

He tunes in to the crackling voice of the President

transmitting through his old radio.

The man’s eyebrows furrow

as he ponders the President’s promises.

We will get through this.

Life will be better.

Every morning, waking up to the hollow feeling in his stomach.

Wrapping his chilled bones in his thin, threadbare blanket

to try and keep some of the warmth of dreaming

when he fell back into harsh reality.

Shuffling out of his splintering house,

weak floorboards creaking under his gaunt frame.

The cold morning light floods his vision as he steps outside,

a dismal, slate sky cast overhead.

He trudges into the breadline with everyone else,

their feet dragging limply, empty stomachs growling weakly.

A blanket of hopelessness envelops America,

suffocating its citizens,

muting all colors of life.

The man connects his mind back to the present.

The President’s words

fill the gaping hole of despair

in his heart

with a new yearning

for a world

where people didn’t suffer the incessant gnawing of constant hunger,

didn’t recognize others’ expressions of defeat as a mirror of their own,

didn’t pull at their pockets and find nothing but lint,

didn’t feel their heartstrings drawn taut every night

as their children’s faces fall

in disappointment

when they brought back nothing more

than meager meals of stale bread.

People who didn’t have to survive from ration to ration

provided by the government.

Something better than this.

A place where people didn’t so often succumb

to the devastating emptiness in their demanding stomachs

until the need for more and more drives them to fade away completely

or to the icy claws of night, crushing them in its iron grip

until the bitter numbness overwhelms them entirely

and darkness closes in

with sweet mercy.

The President’s words lift the man out of his gloomy thoughts,

eliciting an unwavering determination

into all disheartened Americans

ideating only a bleak future from the grim present

The dream of a more promising world

Roosevelt swore to make reality.

The man grasps onto those words,

the last fragile string of hope.

They were the warmth

to help the people persevere through the darkness of the times,

the light,

to guide them into a brighter future.