Midnight Reflections

Last call sends me home.

Hazy eyes that see my life

reflected at night.

Stumbling back through a miserable February frost, steam rises from the interstate overpass and permeates into my stinging lungs. The bridge’s unforgiving concrete ceiling serves as a home to the dregs, the junkies, and the discarded human waste lost in the bowels of an insatiable society. Walking past like faded ghosts in the fog, their faces reflect the horrors of being left behind. Scars scream the pain of being jumped in the park for a pair of shoes. Teeth cocaine-cracked and jagged from one too many run-ins with the cops. Their earthen shells creak rickety and unstable as they hobble on blistered feet and social paranoia. Hungry, anything helps, his cardboard sign suggests.

“Spare some change?” He asks through mumbled gums.

Parents, principals, and politicians insist he’ll only use it to score a fix or drink himself into a coma. Yet my cold, numb hands finger their way into the deepest corners of barren pockets.

What’s a few quarters

if it helps you through the night?

Who am I to judge?

— Jeff Englehart