Homeless

So in American Literature II today I got bored hearing about THE GRAPES OF WRATH and wrote this little thing about poor/homeless people...

You can’t see me, I’m just a ghost. I watch you pass me by everyday. At the subway station, outside the convenience store. I’m ragged and beat down; my clothes are brown paper rags. Denim and sweat pants.

“Spare a dollar? Can you spare a dollar?” I ask when you pass by. Sometimes you frown, embarrassed you say:

“No, not today.”

Other times, most times, you just keep right on walking…like you didn’t even hear me. That’s because you didn’t, I’m just a ghost. A figment of humanity. You probably think I was born this way, but I wasn’t dead on arrival. I was once like you. My past, like my future, is of no consequence to anyone. Hunger, despair, and loneliness are my only friends. They follow me faithfully as I haunt this jungle of steel, glass, and concrete.
Did you know it’s a crime to be poor? It’s against the law to not have a home, or a single cent in your pocket?

“You can’t stay here! Leave!”

I’d go home if I had a home to go home to, honest I would. Sometimes I get lucky and for a brief instant someone sees me—a child usually. For a brief instant I feel human again. Offer me a smile, a meal…hell…a simple look my way is like golden honey for my soul. My life will be a lot shorter than yours—but I spend an agony of time, an endless sea of time alone with my thoughts. Thinking. Just thinking. About my alcoholic step-mother. The first time I smoked weed. Or the time I saw my cousin Tommy strangle our pet cat, Millie. I see Millie sometimes pacing in the dark back alleys of this world. Pawing at a half empty trash can looking for food to fill her spectral stomach.

I think about school and jobs. Jobs I had, and jobs I’ll never have. The days are long and quite. The nights are short and loud.

Have you ever tried sleeping under an overpass? It’s loud and hot, like pressing your ear against the door leading to Hell. There’s a feeling of being stepped on, walked all over. I bet you’ve driven over me a thousand times this year alone. Did you even blink?
I used to be angry, but I forgot what I was angry about. Is there someone to blame? My parents, teachers, friends, politicians, guidance councilors, society? You? Me?
Sometimes, late at night if the moon isn’t out, I go by my old school yard. I sit on the edge of the property and drink out of my paper bag. Drink and think. Could this whole damn mess have turned out differently? Often I can almost make out the faint outlines of children. Children running and playing. What do you call the ghosts that haunt a ghost? I don’t know. I’ve given up.

Basically we’re pretty much the same—you and I. We’re both trapped behind pale eyes, forced to see and experience a few decades of tragedy. Like you, all I’m doing is waiting. Biding my time to die. Do I expect a better life in the great beyond? No. I can’t really say whether or not I’m expecting some kind of cosmic reward at the end of things.
I’ll get a really bad cough one winter, and I’ll eventually spit up my bloody lungs. Or maybe, some bright sunny summer day, I’ll take a few steps onto the warm street…and a city bus will plough right through me—because you can’t really hit a ghost, not really. I’ll just pass right on through, never to wake up again.

I guess there are places, somewhere for people like me. They’re called homes and families. I’m not sure where they are, or how I wandered away from that place I used to belong. Maybe I’ll find my way back. I have nothing, nothing that is but time. So, I’ll wander around looking for a place to settle down. Trying vainly to get someone to see me for more than a few seconds.