Red Light Tales
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 faint, youthful blue called out in a manner similar, though much more subtle and morose, to his cardboard sign. But this could be easily overlooked; their grayness adding to the rest of his monochrome existence. Under the eyes, he had a bulbous nose and a thin line that didn’t frown or quiver, but looked simply tired.
Underneath this he clung to the cardboard sign, gripping it like the bars of a jail cell, trapped in the prison of his poverty. I wish his message had been poetic, or beckoning, but it was not. Instead, it was almost pitiful in its simplicity. Need Money. Written in a red marker that had grown dull with sunlight and age, a blood that had dried, but a wound that hadn’t healed.
But eventually the light turned green. And he was forgotten.
And while I can feel sorrow, I will never know who he is, or who he was, or who he might be in a world where somehow he wasn’t laid off, and kept going to Alcoholics Anonymous, and never voted for a president that is everything he is not. He would explain that he wasn’t always like this, if ever asked. But I would never know that from his red light tale. I would never know that he was as much of a by-product of my life as the carbon dioxide the car had left to live with him.
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 faint, youthful blue called out in a manner similar, though much more subtle and morose, to his cardboard sign. But this could be easily overlooked; their grayness adding to the rest of his monochrome existence. Under the eyes, he had a bulbous nose and a thin line that didn’t frown or quiver, but looked simply tired.
Underneath this he clung to the cardboard sign, gripping it like the bars of a jail cell, trapped in the prison of his poverty. I wish his message had been poetic, or beckoning, but it was not. Instead, it was almost pitiful in its simplicity. Need Money. Written in a red marker that had grown dull with sunlight and age, a blood that had dried, but a wound that hadn’t healed.
But eventually the light turned green. And he was forgotten.
And while I can feel sorrow, I will never know who he is, or who he was, or who he might be in a world where somehow he wasn’t laid off, and kept going to Alcoholics Anonymous, and never voted for a president that is everything he is not. He would explain that he wasn’t always like this, if ever asked. But I would never know that from his red light tale. I would never know that he was as much of a by-product of my life as the carbon dioxide the car had left to live with him.
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