the chilled, wet morning hurried us to our destinations, the wind pushing us, pushing us so we had the excuse to not notice them;
the woman in her wheel chair, a grimy, yellow blanket clutched tightly around her, her defiance to the wind and the heavy mist, the look on her face clearly conveying her message: ‘fuck you, wind. fuck you, rain. i am here and i have survived one more miserable night;’
the psychotic woman sprawled across two squares of sidewalk, talking to the imaginary residents of either her private hell or her private heaven or her private purgatory. i suspect purgatory for her, that twilight life caught between the dawn and the dusk and the dawn;
the slender, young black man to whom i spoke a good morning and who stopped, a befuddled look crossing his face as if some alien creature had thrust up through the sidewalk in front of him; a young man of the street who, after realizing i had said good morning to him, had the remnants of some manners a strong woman taught him, the memory of her springing up in his mind long enough to chide him into saying good morning, ‘sir’ before begging some spare change. with change in hand, he started on his way, off on his morning rounds, only to stop and turn and say, ‘have a good day, my brother.’ and in that instant we were brothers, he, my brother and i his, as i said to him, ‘be careful with yourself, my brother,’ and him moving off into the distance.
some of us revile them, the street urchins, simply because we realize somewhere deep within that given just a small, a minute change in circumstance, we would be them. i saw myself in all three simply because i saw them, acknowledged them as fellow travelers on the road whether through spoken word or simple acknowledgment to myself that they existed, not invisible, at least to me, acknowledged as humans, deserving, as much as anyone, some small shred of dignity, of humanity.
if i tell the truth, they teach me.