come back...

"Come back, won't ya? Come back and talk to me?" I told him I would. And I will. I know he likes his coffee double/double, just like my da did.

His mother died awhile ago and he is still full of sorrow about this. He quit his job but I didn't get the whole story. He spoke softly and wept several times while we talked. Two of his ribs were broken in a recent fight - one he stepped into in order to help out a friend. I think he got the worst of it. The injuries are slow to heal. Living on the streets means that you don't get adequate nutrition. And today the temperature is 32 but it feels like 43. I bought quiche and salad and mango juice for him and his friends to eat. Something healthy in the hopes that even one meal can make a difference. His eyes are bloodshot and his hands are swollen, with cracked fingernails. While we are chatting a woman with a baby in a stroller stops and gives them some smokes and some change. She doesn't look like she has much to spare but she smiles and laughs for a moment with them. She returns later and gives them ten dollars. I always want to talk to the people who give - I am curious about their stories. Another man stops by to talk with me. He was in Seaton House a month ago and now has work. He has a tattoo of the serenity prayer on his arm, above the name of a lost soul.

The men I am talking to are in a neighbourhood where pricey condo's are being build on every corner. The garbage container they are in front of tells me "You are only steps away from your new home..." and these men are only steps away from their homes. They all sleep in in this hood. Not in condos, but in doorways and parks.

But what I'm thinking about as I write this is touch - and the human need for it. He kept reaching out for my hands but his hands never quite made it. They would graze my fingers and rest there for the merest moment as if he knew that we didn't know each other well enough for this kind of exchange, yet he dared to anyway, for his need was great. I looked at his hands a great deal. They were dirty and his fingernails were grimy. He had white patches on his nails and they were broken in many places. His hands looked arthritic and as if fingers had been broken and never set. Yet they also looked like they had accomplished many labours. The potential for kindess and violence lay within them as they do within all hands and humans...