A Trail of Shadows

V

Blank looks pierce through your body. They are an open book, and you're reading it. Compassion. This old garbage collector, he spends his nights in a shed. Courageous. Hardworking. Not like the good-for-nothings who set my car on fire on New Year's Eve. I should get involved in one of those organizations defending the rights of our foreigners. Hate? Yeah, you're right. A good worker, and the vampires are sucking the blood out of him, as they say. What can I do about it? Four wives. Legions of kids. Family allowances stacking up, one after the other. And who is footing the bill, my dear? Dirt and filth all over the place. They're just different, why pretend they're not? It's hypocritical. I'm telling it as it is, screw intellectual terrorists!

Yet none of them knows your face. You're a green and yellow shadow. They instinctively step aside when you roll the garbage cart. When you bend to pick up their trash, you are like a tree swept by the autumn wind. You have even invented a sport for your own amusement. You don't pick up newspaper pages lying on the pavement. You wait for the wind to lift them up and place them right in your palm. You turn them over, you unfold them. Frail birds, harbingers of chaos. Soccer games. Horoscope. Weather forecasts. Through his workings, God brings you here, on this sidewalk, the beat of the world.