People

No Hope Left

by C.B. Cook
09/23/15
Not For Sale
Author requests article critique

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The wind.

It’s such a beautiful noise, at night when you can’t fall asleep and you hear it howling through the trees.

Unless you’re the homeless man on the corner.

You know the one. You pass by him every day on the way to work or school. His thin clothes offer no protection from the cold. His head rests on his knees as he sleeps, his few belongings clutched to his chest.

He’s not a bad man, he’s just fallen on bad times. He had a wife, and two cute little girls. Had. He tried so hard to earn money, doing odd jobs here and there. His only joy had been coming home to his wife. And his two daughters, so little, such cute curls. Then the sickness had come.

He didn’t know why he didn’t die. Somehow he overcame the sickness. But those two little girls and his wife. They weren’t so lucky.

He lost his job. He lost his wife. He lost his daughters. He lost his house. He lost hope.

He was in an unfamiliar town, lost, with no way to go anywhere. So he stands by the road holding a cardboard sign. He doesn’t hope. No one stops for him. They find themselves purposefully avoiding his eyes, looking anywhere but where he is. You do the same. The two of you are in different worlds. After all, that homeless shelter a couple blocks away should be the one taking care of him. He could just go there if he wanted.

But he doesn’t know. You do.

The wind blows through the trees, and the homeless man’s toes and fingers grow numb in the dark of night. With no hope left.