Fancy shades ripped closed to block out our slow and awkward
passing
We heard their car doors electrically locking when we drew limpingly
too near
Pulling in their children they dropped their eyes and moved
away
We felt the wind of their vehicles passing far too closely
as we slunk along
Their hands grasped to assure their valuables as they left
us in their hurried wake
Lights came on as we shuffled by, we were part of the cold
and dark they kept outside
Infants stared blankly back as they were carried quickly
away from us
Their elder’s eyes focused at points somewhere below and
beside our dirty faces
We walked where they only drove and tasted their palpable
distrust as well as their exhaust
They had us removed from public places when we made them
feel ill at ease
They laughed and talked louder just to utterly crush our
too-silent presence
We tried to act like we did not notice that they pretended not
to see us
We walked in their hand-me-downs but we were not their
children or their brothers
They swept their dust out upon us as we fumbled through
their leftovers
We could not avoid their blank stares even though dark
glasses hid their eyes
They brushed themselves with vigor after our chance and
accidental contact
They learned to just step over us as we learned to sit
sleeping where they walked
They grew impatient with our simple nagging presence every
day in their busy lives
We stood in long lines waiting outside their pale in
anticipation of rumored handouts
We let go our privacy and re-evaluated our dignity under
dingy yellow city lights
We were the bogeyman but our own kids fled the onrushing
vans of faceless soccer mommies
They tried to trap us in a net of ordinances but we slipped
thru like spineless jellyfish
The papers ran short paragraphs when their misfits beat one
of us to death at night
They shook their heads when we froze to death outside the
over-filled homeless shelters
We crowded dirtily into the libraries and city parks, much
to their disgust
Possessed of neither cell phones nor addresses, no good jobs
awaited us
Our children crawled the floors of downsized welfare offices
in growing grimy numbers
They covered their faces as we coughed and hacked and spit
as they passed nearby
Social workers never approached us without medical gloves
and often they wore masks
The garbage men and street sweepers looked down with great
disdain upon us
They charged us with vagrancy and public nuisance since we
had nowhere else to go
Too many offered us their help, but only on Christmas and
Thanksgiving day
We shuffled by honest citizens from understaffed shelters to
overcrowded rescue missions
We spent days waiting at the ER trying to drive up their
health insurance premiums
We ate day-old bread in cast-off clothes as our kids noses
ran and we choked upon despair
We
finally realized our lives were better left unseen and our needs best left
unspoken
