Remembered

Remembered




Isn't it all any of us wants? To know
we are remembered? That the bits and pieces
of our lives are in someone's keeping?
No one wants to be forgotten, erased, nullified.

The forgotten, the disenfranchised: those whom
society has tossed away. They who are but
rubbish on the streets and yet can't
be merely tossed out with the trash.

The forgotten ones--the homeless
crouched in condemned buildings. Addicts
or merely those whom luck has forsaken--
no job without an address, no address without a job.

But, you see, these are not the nameless,
not the faceless. They are the smiles in the rain
when the Mission van rolls through. They share
their few bites with the dog. They exist such as it is.

Some, walk the streets selling only themselves
not their souls. The old man, the war veteran
who fell between the cracks in the sidewalk
hiding from an orange mist only he can see.

The Girl Who Reads, always begging for a book.
The Hobbits who got up, clean, and out.
Marilyn Monroe with long blond hair and bruised jawline.
CeeCee, who lost the battle with too little, too late.

The boy who feeds a cowering dog even as he often cowers,
owned by someone stronger and meaner than he.
The old woman who always, no matter what, wears rags and smiles.
The one who still thinks the worst street better than 'before.'

I've heard their stories, their histories. They live.
Well some do. Others now only ghosts in the night.
But their faces remain. Their tales linger.
And in this small way, they shall be

Remembered.