The Husk

One day to bring one colossal moment. A moment when you are eclipsed for a mere second into a parallel frame of focus, forced irrevocably to recognize the apathy of the other. Judgment Day in all its inordinate ‘lack’ of splendor.

You roll down your car window to passively stare at a wafer-thin husk of ‘once’ mortal proportions, flailing on the baking asphalt. Limbless, listless, restless; screaming and shrieking desperately trying to dodge between the dual stream of trapping traffic. Fruitlessly striving to preserve a life which both he and you are fully aware, is probably better off lost.

Just once lucid glance when your eyes, conveniently masked in black plastic and glitter panache, collide with his. The eighty-something, bag of bones, trying to maneuver his very existence with the rhythmic rotating of his palms. Shaking and shivering like a rabid dog in the middle of a cross-section current. Just the shocking paralysis of realization. The sheer enormity of parallels.

‘You’ who rolled down your window to cool off and ‘he’ who dances on the baked tarp to survive. Still you continue to placidly stare at the beggar, so plagued with his perils that he forgot to beg. Forgot to cook up a story, forgot to send you a wish of happiness and a good future, because he was too busy trying to work on juggling his own.

For once the guilt ‘does’ get the better of you, it crashes into your being, so fervently that you are forced to act. This is ‘your’ beggar, the one who is meant to telepathically channel some lost part of your humanity, even if it’s only for a passing second. And so you heed the call, you help the Husk.
Or so you repeatedly tell yourself, to crop conscience. You stop the car and help him to the shade, dish out whatever it is you consider an exorbitant amount for the likes of him and pat yourself on the back for being human. All the while the Husk cringes away from you, blaming you with his innate ‘being’ for being you. He shirks and shrinks from your touch, believing you to be just another jackal…only there to rip out yet another one of his rotting limbs.

You drive away, you drive on. Crying and placating yourself for being ‘genuine’. Doing all you could. For this guilt too shall pass.
It cannot be helped.
You go home, take an aspirin so you ‘don’t feel’ the headache, you take a shower so you ‘don’t feel’ the dirt, you take a nap so you ‘don’t feel’ depressed, you write an article so you ‘don’t feel’ shallow, you order Mc Donald’s so you ‘don’t feel’ hungry, you drink Coke so you ‘don’t feel’ thirsty, you switch on the AC (full blast) so you ‘don’t feel’ hot.
You do all you can, so you ‘don’t’ feel.
Because feeling means admitting you CAN.

Then you force yourself to smile sitting at your desk contemplating, praying, pretending to be ‘one’ with God in the moment. You look at the tack board on your desk, and you read.
“Life is a limousine. There’s a front seat and a backseat. And a window in between”.

A Window.
No Door.