This woman is all of us. 

She can’t stop saying “me” when she sees a bread crust lying in the road. 

Why are we doing this? 

What about that bread crust makes us feel so seen? 

Is it the brokenness? 

Is it the loneliness? 

Is it that the bread crust reminds us of the dreams we gave up to follow a man across the globe, only to be scorned and cheated and lied to? 

Do you think the bread crust has come home to a seemingly empty house, only to find a bottle of perfume that is far more expensive than anything she could ever purchase, sitting on the nightstand? 

Is that why I see myself in it? 

Does the bread crust have an essence of hope, shining through its dark circumstances? Do you think the bread crust knows what it’s like to have loved and lost? Do you think the bread crust would do it again if given the opportunity? Or is that naive, ignorant even? To return to life with a renewed sense of vitality, despite all the evidence that it’s a cruel and dark place? 

Bread crusts resemble a spirit that has been trodden upon so viciously by circumstance that it can hardly live on. Discarded, lying open in the road, waiting to be stolen away by a vermin. 

Maybe that’s why we can’t stop saying “me.”