The fast descent of snow
covered Reno like a legion of white angels
furious flakes gliding and collecting in mass
it was late
around 2 a.m.
or so.
I was stranded like an alien in another world whose ship had crash landed in a strange, hostile city.
I remember turning the corner,
a body was sleeping in the door way.
I felt my heart leap out from its chest as if some wild boar lived in there.
I felt a warm wave of compassion engulf me for this person who could have been anybody. I could see no face. Man or woman I could not tell.
Just a body.
Who are you huddling in unforgiving cracks of a broken down society?
This reflected so much to me in that moment that I stood, half paralysed, gawking at the stranger, wishing I could do something. Being broke I could offer no money otherwise I would have laid down a 20 beneath his back pack.
What a brave soul, daring to sleep out here. -10 below. Just a sleeping bag.
Was it a veteran?
All I know is that he or she was a member of the human race.
No face. No food. No shield to protect him.
I wanted to call someone but I knew nobody here.
How could society so eagerly throw away people as if they are just inconvenient trash?
It spoke a lot about our system. How could anyone trust it?
Not me.
Not ever.
They will only lie, imprison or **** you with no regard for anything humane.
No heart.
Soul-less.
12 days stranded and there were so many homeless people that it felt like a 3rd world country.
Except for the lights beaming from Casinos which 3rd world countries do not have.
My friend just committed suicide two weeks ago. He visited me in my dreams. I could feel him walking next to me.
A 12 year friendship, gone like that. Tears were trapped within me. I could feel them but I couldn't let them spill until I got through this. I willed myself to be only IRON.
Let the softness collect and build. No time to cry.
The heart was like this sleeping body, left exposed and vulnerable in a doorway,
no shield from the way they talk to you, convince you its fair and normal to leave people in snowy streets with nothing.
They'll turn you cynical in a flash, saying that he deserves it but who knows this person's thoughts, the texture of his life spreading over walls that I couldn't see.
I pictured this person like a brother.
He could have been through anything.
He slipped from the top of a dream, landed here in a doorway, snow fall whispering ten million white pages through his beaten life.
His key to love buried and burning beneath 10 feet of snow.
I walked away, ashamed, tired,
trying not to let my heart leak out from my eyes and freeze against my stinging face. It was not easy trying to suppress a sea from spilling.
All I could think about was home.
No shield around my heart as it opened up
to let in every white Angel of love landing there, growing huge with mounds of feelings;
still,
it broke my heart with flakes of falling silence that a pen could never trace.