the cost of living

I wrote another poem.

Another attempt to unpack the raw edges of the space in which I find myself. A place where the cost of eggs rise in tandem with our eyebrows, and where the lamp’s feeble glow is all the warmth we can muster.

I wrote this poem quickly. Sometimes words come fast and messy, spilling out before I can decide whether they’re worth keeping. But I’ve been thinking about what these lines might mean, so I’ve unpacked them here in essay form, trying to do justice to the thoughts on the stacks. Maybe these reflections will help us start a conversation. The Cost of Living is a conversation with ourselves and each other, a questioning of endings that always seem to come back around.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedTHE COST OF LIVING

This is the end here
now. Gather up your blankets
and covers. Huddle in close to
the lamp.
It don’t give off much heat, but

what are you doing here
now? Sacred
woman. Empty
nest. What poems did you write
On the back of receipts
for eggs?

Was that the end there
then? Did you gather up your blankets
and covers? Huddle in close to
the lamp?
Did it give off much heat?

What are you doing there
Now?
Sacred woman.
Empty nest.
Oh. What poems we did write
On the back of receipts
for eggs!

The poem opens with a stark declaration: “This is the end here now.” That line carries a weight of finality, exhaustion, and resignation. Yet even in the face of this ending, the speaker urges “gather up your blankets and covers” and to “huddle in close to the lamp.”

That lamp, barely emitting any heat, stands as a feeble beacon in a world that has grown too cold, too indifferent. There’s something achingly intimate about that image: two people, or maybe two parts of the same soul, sharing a shivering space. It’s a moment of collective vulnerability—a moment when the simple act of seeking warmth becomes a protest against a world that’s steadily draining our resources, both material and emotional. In the weak glow of this lamp, we glimpse both fragility and the persistence of hope.

It evokes for me, this little light of mine. Hide it under a bushel? No. I’m gonna let it shine.

When the poem invokes the “sacred woman” and mentions an “empty nest,” it speaks directly to isolation and resilience. These images are charged with intimacy and longing. The sacred woman embodies a resilient spirit, a beacon of quiet strength in a space that feels abandoned. The empty nest resonates with loss, carrying echoes of the absence of something once vital.

This juxtaposition is both personal and political. It hints at a world where our most intimate spaces are marred by absence and neglect. It hints at the “land of counterpain” to which Black women retreat, when the systems around us leave us hollow. Yet there is beauty and unspoken understanding here: a beauty born of the quiet defiance of continuing to exist and the understanding that pain of isolation is shared, and in that shared experience, we find a kind of solace.

One of the most striking images in the poem is writing on the back of receipts, for eggs, of all things. The eggs that the internet blames for our current issues. The ever-rising price of eggs! Despite the changing times and administrations, that cost keeps climbing.

Receipts are mundane fragments that document our transactions, our survival. Yet here, they transform into canvases for our deepest truths, bearing witness to a reality where even the basics come with an unbearable price.

Is a poem on an egg receipt an insistence on finding beauty and truth in even the most overlooked moments? In that simple act, there is both an elegy to our resilience and a defiant shrug at the absurdity of it all. Or perhaps the poem on the egg receipt embodies the absurdity itself.

What do you think?

Throughout the poem, questions echo: “Is this the end now? Was that the end then?” These questions do not seek neat resolutions; they are open, unanswerable murmurs reflecting life’s inherent uncertainty. Every ending carries the seed of a new beginning, and every question leaves room for possibility.

It is in that in-between, the unspoken spaces, that the poem truly lives. Here, we are invited to lean into uncertainty, to let it breathe, and to acknowledge that sometimes the most honest answers are those left unarticulated.

The Cost of Living explores the emotional and creative toll of existing in a world that squeezes us dry. It challenges us to reckon with the daily prices that we pay. Is this the end now? Or was that the end then? The poem prompts us to consider how circumstances shape our behaviors. It asks us to notice cycles of despair and inaction. Even as the cost of living rises, we persist in writing. We continue to craft beauty out of scraps, on the back of receipts, in the glow of a tired lamp, armed with nothing but our raw, unfiltered truth.

The Cost of Living is my conversation with the chaos of everyday life, a dialogue between despair and defiance, between unyielding questions and the fragile hope that sustains us. In these words, I leave space: space for uncertainty, for vulnerability, for the unspoken truths that shape our shared experience.

Love y’all. Mean it. If you love me back, buy me a book!

-B