Shapes

Photo by Chase Lewis on Unsplash

We all see them. But they’re just shapes. We don’t look.

Sometimes they’re passed out on the sidewalk. Sometimes they’re huddled into themselves in that perpetual drizzle of rain that has continued for weeks. We barely make it from the supermarket to the car without complaining about the water running down our necks or making our straightened hair curl up again.

Sometimes they’re standing in below-zero-temperatures, the wind blasting over them. They peer out from the darkness of the hood covering their head. The wind bites at their bare hands, red, cracked, and bleeding from weeks of exposure, barely able to hold their cardboard sign. The messages on those signs—written in all caps with king size permanent markers—tend to have a theme: Hungry, Anything Helps, and almost always, God Bless.

We’re experts. We know exactly what intersection they’ll be at, and even those who aren’t religious pray that the light is green.

But today it’s not. So, we stare bullets into that red light. We change the radio station. We clean the back window even though we just came from the car wash. Through the rearview mirror we watch the blade swish the water back and forth in a curve. Finally, the light turns green, and we leave the intersection and the shape on the sidewalk behind. Until tomorrow.

We know they’ll be there because that’s what they do. They’re just working the system. They make more in a couple of months then we make in a year. And even if they’re not raking in the dough by the thousands, they use what they do get to buy drugs and booze. They’re young and able-bodied. Why aren’t they out looking for a job?

*

May I ask you to put yourself in their place for a moment?

You hunker into your hoodie as you sit on the concrete sidewalk and watch the feet of hundreds of people stride by. “Can I have a few quarters?” you mumble, not really expecting a response.

The only answer to your question is the clicking of high heels and the swish of slacks against each other. They walk by as if you blend into the brick wall you’re leaning against. You’re just a shadow. They hardly see you anymore. Those who do notice you studiously avoid eye contact.

Somehow, because you don’t have anything, it makes you worthless.

*

What is it that makes a man? His stuff or his soul? The way we act says it’s his stuff. They still live and breathe, exactly like us. They’re not just a shape. They have a face. But we choose not to see it.

Who is the one who is more of a shape? The one who feels rejection at every conscientious evasion or the ones who harden themselves to see through the soul of the person on the corner until that person morphs into a mere silhouette?

We can never quite make them less than a shadow, however. We can’t make that figure disappear completely. Because even if they’re not there today, we know they were yesterday and will be there tomorrow. It’s their corner, and we notice when they’re gone.

And no matter how hard we watch the light in front of us, we still see that fuzzy cardboard sign out of the corner of our eye. God Bless.