like a dog

How has it come to this? 

How is it that tonight James has been abandoned on the rank walkway of an otherwise-compassionate community?

For him to lay his face down on the sidewalk, to feel his cheek, his mouth against the coarse slab of crawling infection, to lay his face in the worst we can do to one another; how is it that again

James would press his flesh against the pavement for a pillow?

Here is what we do know: James was once a child. He played. He laughed. He dreamed. He more than likely made a wish on his fifth birthday before he blew out the candles on his cake. His mother had hopes for her son, hopes that she treasured within her heart. Perhaps she even prayed for him.

Now the sum of his aspirations is stuffed into a Taco Bell bag, and his bed is every night without a blanket.

How many years does it take to whittle away your soul? How long must you despair before the most reasonable place for you to lay your head is on the stains of the city sidewalk? How do you come to feel so loathsome?

I cannot imagine.

Some might be tempted to compare James to a dog. And why shouldn't we be so honest? But if you walk just a few blocks from where James is laid out tonight, you might hesitate at the comparison. A short stroll up the street is where you will, in fact, find a dog: at the "doggie daycare, spa, and resort". In feather beds and heated rooms, the dogs here are fed nutritious meals and given all the love you would expect for your own children. They are bathed, groomed, exercised, pampered, and played with. O, happy dog. 

But this dog's life does not come cheap. The cost of boarding one precious pup is what it would take to provide housing for four people at the apartment complex less than a mile down the road. 

I can't imagine the uninterrupted series of nights that James must endure. When I try, I can enter into a few days of the experience, and from there a few weeks. But a year? A decade? I can't do it. My empathy breaks down. Are the nights spent in an all-consuming anger? Are they spent in mourning? Or do they simply fade from consciousness?

James, I'm sorry.