The Pauper

I saw you today,

sitting by that wall again,

little has changed in seventeen years 

about the way you lay hands out 

knees pressed to your chest 

and back against the wall,

praying for the good of the man

who places,

in your outstretched

hands,

your income for the day,

because your prayer all you have

to offer in return.

But your eyes they’ve wrinkled,

your smile has lost its teeth,

your knees are bruised,

fragile, 

and the life inside you,

it’s fading,

it has become as thin the fog 

of your shallow breaths on winter day,

as slight as your shadow 

cast by the lone lamppost on the street 

in the dead of night 

when the city is sound asleep,

and you stay awake 

reliving tomorrow in today 

because your days don't age with time.

That thought 

builds on the tiredness in your bones,

tiredness that layers itself 

with every passing day,

piling up until it hardens you 

into its own stillness,

and you wonder,

if perhaps in that stillness  

there is more comfort 

than in the invariable routine of a life

lived at the mercy of others,
a life,

lived from breath to breath,

with only emptiness in between.