THE BREAD IT TAKES

Photo by Doğu Tuncer on Unsplash.

inspired by Les Miserables

This is the story 

of the gravity

that a broken piece of bread

has on a human being. 

Listen closely. 

Jean’s three nephews had long

grown silent. Their hunger 

echoed across empty faces. 

His sister, their mother, 

sat at the window

while they starved,

subdued by her poverty of hope. 

Unbearable. Unbeatable. 

He takes the bread it takes

to keep them alive. 

Locked. Chained. Fettered

in the fathoms of the Foudroyant

until his nephews’ toothy smiles

fade from the lockbox of his memory.

Whatever it takes

to survive

are the words he breathes

onto his freshly carved scars. 

The fresh fruit of freedom – 

finally, decades of self-death later –  

does not taste sweet

when it is bruised 

by the social sin of parole. 

No one looks past his papers. 

He understands, now, 

his sister’s choice. 

And so, he remakes 

his own. 

Shouldered like Atlas, 

blunt butter knives rattle 

in the pack of a lonely man  

running like he is trying to get away

with murder. 

The clatter of a soul

inside a conscience

is deafening, 

tender, and obscene. 

We shouldn’t be watching. 

Turn instead 

toward where he came from. 

“When you think about it,”

the bishop reasons, 

backlit against the window

from which the yoked man flees,

“was the silverware even ours 

to begin with?”

The spines of a fork

laying on the flagstones

between bent knees,

pointed toward the heavens

skewer the mind of the poor man

Who cannot outrun 

the gaze

Of the local police. 

Freed from the bag

when he was thrown down. 

Pierced 

on the evidence 

he hadn’t even bothered to hide. 

There would be no denying 

this thieving.  

There could be no denying 

the pit he had chosen to step into. 

The walls, high and slick. 

The bottom, slowly sinking. 

There could be no denying

that he deserved no better. 

A finger under his chin

brings us back to his face

bowed over his bent body. 

A finger hooked with age and soft

with understanding, tilts

his face up to meet the face

of God’s own man. 

“Did you hear me?” 

he asks. “I gave 

that silver

to you.”

“He did not steal,”

the bishop assured 

the soldiers who were just trying 

to follow the rules. 

“In truth, he forgot 

the most important pieces

I asked him to keep.” 

The white-haired father

laid a gently gnarled hand 

on the thief’s arm, 

roped with purgatorial labor. 

He took the man’s hand

and wrapped it around the base

of a silver candlestick, 

engraved with a vine

that could be felt even by 

calloused fingers. 

The uniformed men muttered

and mumbled on their way out, 

but believed

the old man. 

Together, we stand now 

in an almost empty

hall, a bare dinner table

lit by the light of a quiet fire. 

The room is silent, save 

for the sound of the flames

crackling in uncontrolled

harmony with the two remaining souls, 

and breathing, 

heavily.  

“You have with you now,”

the bishop says 

to the man at his feet – 

still kneeling, 

still reeling – 

“the means

for an honest life. Go

in peace. 

I have bought 

your soul

for God.”

It takes 

a few more moments – 

silent, unsure – 

but Jean finally rises from his knees. 

His feet are on solid ground

for the first time in his life. 

As he pulls the bag

full of knives, forks, plates

back over his shoulder,

he turns to go, thinking so hard

he cannot speak. 

Weighed down now 

not with shame,

but with the lightness 

of this unexpected

and strange mercy, 

Jean Valjean leaves 

the bishop’s house, 

a warm piece of bread 

in his pocket and a newfound dignity 

slowly radiating up his spine.  

On the road, 

Watch as he turns his face 

toward the rising sun

and sets off for Montreuil-sur-Mer, 

not a perfect man, 

but one learning,

yearning. 

Broken and made new.