“They tell me to fear the homeless in LA but I do not. They say women alone at night should not be out, but I have my dogs, and we frequent empty parks after dark, side-by-side with encampments, and we watch (my dogs and I) the homeless cart their belongs by. Well, my dog barks.

They hand me giant jugs over chin-high fences, to ask if I would fill them; their freshest water exists from a dog park spout. Last week I saw a man struggling to press a cardboard slat into the grate of an open sewage pipe, his secret resting place. About a month before, a man with all his worldly belongings strewn along the plastic floor of a porta-***** so smeared in ****t, you’d not dare touch a square inch. Rain was pouring, and he needed to sleep with a roof.

And I think, I am not so different from them. Me, with my white skin and pretty smile; people treat you nicer when you’re pretty. When you can put a face on and say straight-sounding things, and not speak of months spent living in your car, sleeping on street-sides, praying for no cops. Or of deep pain——no, do not speak of that. Too much pain makes people afraid, makes people want to look away. How no one noticed the man hiding his face in the sewage drain, the man sleeping in the ****t-smeared porta-toilet,   because   every   person   noticed,   and   just   decided   not   to   look.

and I think about      how many false narratives are propagated by fear——“