Sonnet for the Salt I Didn't Buy

I balanced the whole week on what I saved:the coffee brewed at home, the walked-not-driven mile,the salt I didn't buy because I cravedthe calculus of doing without, the guileof thinking abstinence itself a skill.I priced my hunger out in units Icould tally on a Sunday, feel the thrillof ledgers closing clean beneath a skythat did not care what I had scrimped or spared.The salt sat on the shelf. I walked right by.And what I saved, precisely, no one shared —not the raise I wasn't paid, not the why.So call this thrift what it more nearly means:a hunger with better manners than it seems.