On The Street

They know me, but they do not see me. Their eyes skim past my slight figure, slide over my hungry eyes and sunken cheekbones. They do not want to know me, and therefore I am invisible to them. I sit on the concrete, a paper coffee cup in front of me, daring them to look in my eyes and see the world through them. They never do. They prefer to believe that I don’t exist, and so I don’t.
         
They glide past, floating on their money and standing and lies of a better life. They do not realize that once I was just like them, idealistic, filled with hope for the future, ready for change.
         
Change came, and I wasn’t ready. Now I rot alive from the inside out, slowly, on the streets. I will never escape this horror and shame. I can’t and sometimes I think I don’t even want to, it’s easier here. I don’t have to interact, to discern lies from truth, hypocrites from the sincere. I don’t have to talk to anyone, to bare my soul in an exercise of utter pointlessness to be dropped when the next bigger and better thing comes along and takes my place in the affections of another.
         
I am alone in a sea of movers and shakers when I am on the streets. And the streets are where I belong.