"Fools Are My Theme

His cardboard sign whimpered at us from the side of the road. I turned to see if mom had noticed him, but she was focused on the changing of the traffic light, not the tiny moments while it was blushing. Not this man’s red light tale. His face was gray and dull. It sagged toward the earth as if it might fall off if it weren’t being held on by a strap of steel wool hair connecting his long, graying beard and the uncombed animal’s nest sitting on his head. His clothes were tattered, and the gray of his skin and the gray of his jacket had become one: the rough, textured skin of elephants stretched across his entire being. Whatever white had used to live in his shirt was lost in a sea of unidentifiable yellow, orange, and even purple stains. It was no longer a shirt, but a canvas for a sunset painting that would sell for millions if painted anywhere else. His eyes were gray, but like his shirt, they may have once been crisp. Somewhere in them, behind their crust and moisture, a fain

     My wall’s newfound appendages reached like plaster trees out toward the world. Where had these arms that my wall had suddenly grown come from? Could it be that the wall itself was grasping for something? Perhaps it had grown lonely. Or maybe a person living inside it had realized there was a world outside his claustrophobic wonderland.      I walked carefully around them, feeling up and down the arms awkwardly. They felt like a part of the wall. Where normally fingerprints would spin in their spiral dance, textured plaster stuck out here and there like water drops. There was a complete and utter lack of wrinkles and identifying features,  instead opting for the same feel as the fingers. The arms themselves were far to sturdy: the tree trunk arms of giants, unbendable and as stiff as the walls themselves.      And yet, they were undeniably human. Undeniably one of us. The positioning of them was an odd formation of desperation and longing. An uncomfortable combination of emotion

     The man was taller than I would have given him credit for. So tall, in fact, that I could see nothing of his face, which entered the clouds. And beyond presumably.      No, I can’t say whether he was a pale, wrinkled, wise  dude with long, flowing white hair and beard, or some dude with meth teeth and a hat screaming “Make America Great Again”. What I could see were his enormous hands, which he moved dramatically as he talked, as if it were expected of him.      Hopefully he understood that I personally didn’t expect anything of him. Hell, I certainly didn’t expect to meet him.      His palms were old, that was certain. But, they were also young, which made me less certain. The wrinkles on them ran like rivers, deep and pink, like the grand canyon illuminated by a ripe, rising sun. The wrinkles alone told stories, and the words that seemed to crawl on them were often distracting while he was talking, to the point that several times he had to call me back to attention.      Lik