🔵 By Thomas Riffenburg. Photo by lauragrafie.
A caught a glimpse of a mans shadow as I walked about, a man on the fringes, one who sought not company amongst them. Perhaps he feared rejection, or knew its voice would shout him back to the fringes. In either case, I do not know, but I know of a sorrow I have for him. Has all our advancement through the ages left us more cruel? Have we truly become better if we are able to so easy dismiss another as worthless? Does not the spirit of the cosmos dwell in his chest as well? Wonders of sadness may make me pitiful in grief, and yet not even I stopped to include him. How the forgotten man must be, and how wrong to be glad it is not my lot.
Perhaps guilt, perhaps knowing has caused me to write of him, I don’t know, but forgotten man, wherever you may be, no longer are you forgotten, at least by me. Do not look for me, for you will not find me, simply because I wish not to be found by you. I have not the strength to be as you are. Perhaps I am weaker than you. I don’t know if my words come as a comfort to you, or if I am but one now worthy of your hate. You cause me heaviness of heart, through nothing you’ve done, just by who you are, and I don’t know why. Perhaps you are my living shame. I have been tormented at night by the memory of your sight, but perhaps it is my own doing, for I, like everyone else, am glad you are on the fringes of life. For you to be next to me would only place me outside life with you, for you are a disease which spreads. Society demands, and so I obey, and for this reason I won’t greet you should I see you again. Writing these thoughts I can’t even courage to deliver.
To myself alone I write, and wonder why I must. Perhaps now I am already like him, the disease of forlorn saturated into my very essence. Why must some be so?