Portrait #39 - That Which Doesn’t Kill You, Breaks You
He is homeless, his address written into the deep lines of his face. We stand face to face over the opening of a trash barrel. I throw away a package wrapping, he digs through looking for scraps to cobble together a meal, or for redeemable cans for change. There are band-aids all over his face. He pays me no mind as I glance at him, wondering what broke him. He is the kind of man I think of when people smugly say, “That which doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger”.
This man is the living, whispered argument to that quote. The man we ignore so we can continue to believe the lie.
Should I give him a dollar? Or would he only be insulted? Or worse, would his wet eyes make contact with mine in gratitude?
With love,
P.S. Challenge, write your own word portrait, tips are here. Leave a comment with a link to your post.
19 Comments so far
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Wow. I Love this!
Thanks Patti. My computer is back, so I’ll be catching up over the next couple of days!
I’ve posted an attempt at a new word portrait.
inspired me to strike a convo with a “similar stranger” in the bus today. he said he could never remember his age nor that of his dog, “Belle”.
Velvet, I bow to your power of words. I really do enjoy you word portraits. If you have an English teacher somewhere who worked with you even a little, and reads these she swells with pride. This is what we want when we ask for a description. Beautiful.
P.S If I were still in a classroom I’d ask for permission to use them as examples of what it’s all about.
Patsy - what a lovely compliment. Thank you! Funny thing is, most of my english teachers didn’t like me. I questioned teachers alot, and may didn’t like that. I had one english teacher in ninth grade, and she told me I should be a writer. Then again in college, a creative writing teacher, even though my poor use of commas and semi-colons drove her mad…heehee.
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