Make Me Great

It felt like a moment I would remember forever, a moment I would write about, and that admirers of my work would talk about in awe and jealousy. That moment in my life when I was so delectably poor, so admirably impoverished, that I ate a wormy apple. Worm included.

What trials he went through, they would say, How much depth his misery gave his writing. They would read my work in glorious envy, and they would talk amongst themselves about the disappointing comfort their parents' work ethics gave them. How their family's wealth deprived them. How they had no true hunger to slake with words where they couldn't afford food. My work would create a generation of discontent would-be writers and philosophers, eager to live for a time on society's fringe and reap the rewards of her scorn.

Yes, I thought, hunger snarling my gut as I ate the apple and its squirming inhabitant. This small thing will make me great.