One More Meal: The Invisible Toll of Hunger in Northern New Hampshire

The refrigerator has that hollow sound again when she opens it, the kind that seems to echo inside her as much as inside the house. She already knows what she’ll find: three eggs, half a bag of carrots, a jar of peanut butter, and bread that’s gone stiff around the edges. She stands there for a moment anyway, as if the act of looking might make something new appear, then closes the door and leans her forehead against its cool surface. The heat has already clicked off. She keeps it low to stretch the oil, but the cold still finds its way through the kitchen floor and up her legs. The kids will be up soon, and she’ll need to figure out how to turn what’s left into three meals.

She used to plan dinners with recipes and shopping lists. These days, she plans survival.

Her SNAP benefits were supposed to reload last week, but they didn’t. Every morning she checks the balance, and every morning it reads the same: $0.00. She called the number on the back of the card, listened to the hold music for nearly an hour, and finally gave up when the line dropped. The woman at the Littleton Food Pantry told her that half the state seems to be in the same place right now, waiting for help that hasn’t come. “You’re not alone, hon,” the woman said, and although she meant it kindly, the words landed with an ache. Being “not alone” doesn’t make dinner.

By seven, the kids are dressed and waiting at the table. She scrambles two eggs and cuts a single slice of toast into three pieces. She tells them she already ate earlier, another small lie she’s begun to tell without thinking about it. Her oldest, Ella, asks if she can pack an extra snack for school.

“Just one today,” she tells her. “You can have more after school.”

The promise is small and empty, but it keeps the morning moving.

When the kids leave for the bus, the house falls silent except for the ticking of the clock and the hum of the refrigerator. She pours herself a cup of black coffee and takes a sip that burns a little going down. It’s something warm, at least. The ache in her stomach is already loud, not just a feeling but a presence that seems to live inside her, demanding attention.

She thinks about the Space Jam movie her kids watched last month—the Monstars stomping and shouting across the screen—and that’s exactly what it feels like inside her body: loud, ugly, insistent, a whole team of something unruly screaming for food and refusing to be ignored. Hunger has become its own kind of noise. It fills her thoughts until she can hardly think of anything else.

She tries to read a few pages of a book, but her brain won’t hold the words. She paces the kitchen instead, her nerves short and sharp, every sound around her turned up too high—the clock ticking, the house settling, even the wind pushing against the siding. Hunger doesn’t just live in her stomach anymore; it’s in her skin, her patience, her focus. It changes the way she moves through the day.

Around midmorning, she sits at the table and opens her phone, refreshing the news again and again. She’s searching for one word: SNAP. Every headline feels distant from her life. A cargo plane crash in Kentucky. A photo of smoke and fire rising over the city skyline. She stares at the image, the way the flames light up the darkness, and then scrolls past it. Even something as horrific as that doesn’t land in her body the way hunger does. The world might be on fire, but her stomach is louder.

She doesn’t read the stories. She just keeps looking for a sign that something has changed, that maybe tomorrow things will go back to normal.

When the kids come home from school, they’re hungry too. They always are, but lately it feels heavier. Her youngest has been waking in the middle of the night asking for cereal, and Ella gets irritated faster than she used to, tears up over small things that never used to matter. Hunger has made them short-tempered and tired, and she recognizes the look in their eyes because she sees it in her own reflection: a dull, strained weariness that sits behind everything else.

She makes rice with beans and the last of the carrots, cutting them thin so it looks like more. They eat quietly. Halfway through, Ella pushes her bowl away. “I’m full,” she says, but her mother knows she isn’t. “Finish it,” she tells her softly. “You finish,” Ella answers. They share a small smile that feels like understanding and heartbreak at the same time.

After they’ve gone to bed, she sits at the kitchen table and stares at her phone again. Her stomach growls, louder this time, and she presses her hand against it like she can quiet it through force of will. The Monstars are still there, noisy and demanding, taunting her for trying to live without them. It’s strange, she thinks, how hunger can take over your whole life. It doesn’t just make you want food; it makes you doubt yourself. It steals your patience and your confidence. It steals the part of your mind that can imagine anything beyond getting fed.

She checks the balance again. Still nothing.

She opens the refrigerator just to look, as if something might have changed since dinner. The light falls on the same nearly empty shelves. She stares for a while, then closes the door again. Sometimes looking feels easier than doing nothing.

She looks around the kitchen—the unwashed dishes stacked by the sink, the crumbs on the table, the smell of beans still in the air. The room feels tired, the same way she does. Her mother used to tell her that hard work meant you’d never go hungry. She believed that once. She isn’t sure anymore.

The kids are asleep upstairs. She pictures them curled under their blankets, their faces relaxed as they dream. She hopes they’re dreaming of something good, something that doesn’t involve food.

Her hands are shaking slightly from exhaustion, or maybe from the hunger itself. She’s not sure anymore where one ends and the other begins.

She turns off the kitchen light but doesn’t go upstairs yet. The dark folds itself around her like a heavy blanket. Her stomach growls again, and this time she lets out a small laugh—not because it’s funny, but because she’s too tired to be angry. It’s amazing, she thinks, how loud a body can be when it’s missing something so simple.

She stands by the table for a long time, staring at the shadows, listening to the quiet of the house and the slow hum of the refrigerator. Tomorrow she’ll check the news again. Maybe there will be a headline that says the shutdown is over, that benefits are restored, that life is moving again. Or maybe there won’t be.

She doesn’t know.

For now, she picks up a pen and writes on the back of an old grocery list that’s been hanging on the fridge for weeks:

Maybe tomorrow.

She smooths the paper flat against the door, presses the magnet over it, and stands there for a moment longer. Then she turns off the light and goes to bed, the sound of her stomach following her up the stairs.

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This story came from watching how quickly security can slip away—and how hunger changes everything. If you’re able, please give to your local food pantry today. Every act of care matters.

-Amanda