There’s a Man…

There’s a man in a wheelchair who sits along the edge of The City. He’s wearing a sign around his neck and shifts it around. I can’t see what it says from my seat on the bus. Outside, the heat bares down with a palpable thickness. He wipes the sweat from his forehead, palm flat, the street being smeared there. His curly, dark hair glistens in the sun while the traffic light turns red. The cars pile up. He begins to roll himself along the edge of traffic, a runway cutting across the asphalt. As he makes his way down, he slowly looks up into every car window. Cars awkwardly shuffle forward, impatient and uncomfortable, the cars personifying what their bodies would otherwise give away.  Windows are drawn tight, like pursed lips- like a tight purse. The man stares up anyways, confrontational but only from that short yet impossible distance. The heat must be making time sluggish.

The light turns Green and the cars, the people, they speed off. They swing their cars ever so slightly around his wheelchair. So they do see him…

The bus also rolls on. I turn my head so I can’t see what’s written on the man’s sign.