20 x 24 

acrylic on canvas 

The man left the store with a thin plastic bag biting into his fingers, stretched white from the weight of what little he could afford. Inside it lived everything he thought he needed to survive the night—cheap calories, stale comfort, necessity pretending to be choice. He’d emptied his pockets for it. Last quarters. Rolled nickels. Pennies counted twice, then counted again. Still, somehow, there had been just enough left to buy his growing boy a small, plastic promise that would break before morning.

The bag felt heavier than it should have.

He stopped. The sky shifted. Something changed—though he couldn’t say what. His grip loosened. The bag slipped free and split when it hit the concrete, coughing its contents across the ground. Thin, exposed, useless. Everything laid bare. Everything he had.

He stared at it, knowing without looking up that none of it mattered anymore.

All that planning. All that scraping. All that weight.

All for a night.