Unto the Least of These My Brethren....

The grey door, heavy as I pull back....ch-click!...swinging to latch with an echo that diminishes as suddenly as it arose. Light brown tile with off white porcelain accents, holy of holies and that most shameful of public spaces. There, sprawling amongst the candy bar wrappers, prophetic scribbling in magic marker black, and soggy grey pieces of refuse, is a man clothed only in the most thread-bare of rags.

I step over, careful to avoid the pool of human waste spreading from beneath the wretch. The stench is overwhelming; I try not to breathe as I relieve myself into the off-white bowl.

As I carefully make my way back past the filth that occupies this place I feel a hand groping about near my foot. Groping for contact, for only a touch, something concrete...an assurance of physical existence. I bolt for the door.


Oh to be touched.


To know another, the feel of skin...so vital. Another human soul connected, fingers upon your own flesh.


I stepped gingerly over.....ran at the thought. RAN! For the love of God in heaven above, why did I feel the need to run? A sin to be such....


Another untouchable sleeping fitfully in this, the land of the free.