We don't allow dirty alter boys here
Don't give them any money, they will just spend it on drugs and gambling….
Ma’am, that is a 9 year old child, how does your heart not shatter every time these words cross your lips. How can you focus on where your dollar is going knowing this developing mind that should be playing and laughing, loving and learning, is intimately familiar with the cycles of addiction. The first euphoric escape provided by an older friend who, yeah, he isn’t the best influence, but at least he will look me in the eye, he knows my name, speaks my language, sees my outstretched hands as more than a potential smudge on your clean skin. He starts to tell me the story of who I am going to be, it’s truths ringing against the way you last treated me, telling me my place. The way things always have been. Waiting for me to grow big enough to fit into your labels comfortably. To know the shame of being a mere babe trapped in a wheel without exit, the small dopamine in a bleak day of strangers staring purposely forward and waving me off with a dismissing hand, or perhaps they aren’t feeling gentle today and they yell. We judge those that cannot sustain their habits, those that do not have disposable income to spend on vices but have the audacity to try and find moments of what feels like joy despite destitution, until the shame that comes after nearly kills. We pay security guards with big sticks to keep them away from the paying customers. We know them by their bare feet, their cracked smiles, their crying eyes without tears, their uniforms of torn clothes which are the summation of worldly possessions. How can you walk by and not want to sweep them up dirt and all into a hug that says nothing more than simply I love you. A love that is not preconditioned on you washing behind your ears, a love that hears the rumblings in your belly and shields you from the empty home, not devoid of people, but devoid of the ability to nurture you. If you drove down the street and saw your own blood sitting in the median, bruises visible from even the distance you force between their suffering and your bliss you would leave your cars running in the middle of the road to run and save them. You would listen to the words coming from their cracked lips in barely a whisper, because the cry for help gets a little more hushed every day it goes unanswered. Tell them you are there, tell them you care, you want to know of the life they are living, save them from your own curt words chasing them away because if they carry your groceries and you scrape the bottom of your heart and find some change to press into their palm…. They will just spend it on drugs.
