Cankerous

She sat smug like a child asserting her importance, self-congratulatory, feeling she has conquered her family's inadequacy with the few dollars in her pocket. She was beautiful back when she was kind, not defeated but ever expanding in her possibility without trading what she knew about the downtrodden, for this knowledge of hunger blessed her with a wistfulness, an understanding unique to angels who see the sorrow in man's eyes as he struggles with himself and the world. "Luxury numbs the mind and the heart," an old sage once said, "it's a cankerous poison that divides more often than unites." Is that true, I wondered. Seeing her smug, she inherited the most hackneyed evolution of one who thought herself at the height of a minor success. A few dollars in her pocket betrayed her impoverishment far worse than if she had none. A few dollars in her pocket bought out grace with a vulgar smile on a face now devoid of charm and beauty. In its place lay a tone in her voice with an insidious measuring up of things according to their market value, a slant to her coercing look, a kind of twisting of the arm dictating 'let my will be done'. All were desperate maneuverings of an ascent to a modicum of power. So hungry. So so hungry still for self-worth that the few dollars in her pocket cannot make right....