Health and Homelessness...NOT

As the cold morning air vitalizes my sleepy mind,
  my body shivers, remembering the warmth of my bed and blanket.

So, after a steaming hot cup of coffee, I make a warm bowl of cereal.
  My body rejoices in the waking up, grateful for food, warmth and security.

And, then I remember my friend who is homeless.
  She woke up to a chill this morning as well, in the back of her van.

She has no source of heat to make coffee or warm cereal,
  and ironically, the food stamps do not purchase warmed food.

So, cold and stiff from another night slept in the back of her van,
  she is faced with a choice...eat something cold and uncooked or buy fastfood.

'Why fastfood?!'  I wonder.  'That's so unhealthy!'
  Yet, in my arrogance-born-of-plenty, I missed a fundamental fact.

The only way she can get warm food is to purchase it with her own money.
  And the only food she can afford to buy is dirt cheap, namely, fast food.

So, as I ate my warm, nutritious cereal and sipped on my Vietnamese java,
  my friend sat in a fastfood parking lot with her cholesteral-ridden, fatty,
  vitiamin-deficient breakfast meal and a cup of darkened water called coffee.