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Steam Steam rises from the bowl across the table. Slow. White. Alive. It curls into the air like something with freedom, like it knows it will disappear but rises anyway. She watches it carefully, the way other children watch cartoons or passing cars. The steam twists, thins, fades. She times its vanishing. No one notices she is not looking at the food. Only at what leaves it. Her hands stay folded in her lap, fingers laced together as if holding themselves in place. The smell reaches her before the warmth does. Rice. Broth. Something salted and kind. Her stomach answers in a language she pretends not to understand. Steam was never meant to be studied like this. Never meant to be someone’s only portion. But she follows every ghostly ribbon of it until the bowl across from her stops speaking. And the air goes clear again. Theme: Childhood hunger BIO: Rana Musleh is a student at Lehman College and a writer whose work focuses on dignity, hunger, and the emotional realities of food insecurity. Her work has been published by West Side Campaign Against Hunger and Poetry X Hunger. She uses poetry to explore how memory, culture, and inequality shape access to food and belonging. Through poetry, she hopes to turn awareness into empathy and empathy into action.
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