NYC Homeless

The homeless man arched in the doorway of the building, he bears the only witness to conversations in my mind. The heated smoke of the subway floats up through the street grates. Counting ever so softly his breath as it heaves in and out with my thoughts. On the threshold of barely caring, his pale fingers reach for the remnants of a cigarette lain in the street. 

He reaches for the taste of nicotine, noting every detail of his urine soaked trousers, his mind destroying all he had committed to life’s memory. Discarding the useless ashes of the cigarette, the ache of his life, dyeing down, in the blink of his eye a thousand stories are being told, choking back on his own sobs, that no one else ever seems to take notice of. The selling of his soul, tortured death of his dreams, the downtown dive he use to frequent.

 What is left now is the decay of a life, a condom in his pocket, tossed cigarettes, and a stick of mint gum he uses as a toothbrush. The urine is the river of pain he will eventually die in..... no one seems to see or care, even take notice. Tracing the echo that I heard, to the silencing of his heart. When asked who kills him, the answer is, we all do. 

I mark my calendar by the closing of his eyes, the seeping of his body fluids leaving stains on the fabric of my face. I knew of a man, though he was not my friend, whom perished in a life of will, recoiled in the disgust of mankind, until his body wrapped so tight became breathless, in a river of his own urine. Weaved within the fabric of NYC, a city where language is never spoken and hypocrisy breeds within, where a thousand pieces of life fall from the sky, his corpse left wide open, to walk all over him, and then, we do.