Dignity

By: Nathan

May you open your heart
to the song
of a soul
once full of home.

I don’t even count
as a statistic
because I don’t sleep in shelters.

I am tolerated,
just a few more shards of smashed glass
on cement floor, in a crawl space
of the last house on the block.

I am a homeless cliché
good grades
scholarships
heft in my profession.
And then, clip.
The cord broke.
No one knows how.

May you unclose your eyes.
A family procession
minus the marching band
saw me off at the airport when I left home.
I was honour and drive. So much more
than fallen strands of string.

May you realize that I know.
The whiff of my booze sweat hits the back of your throat
so hard
you smell topsoil.

Will you put down your phone
to what lies behind
the broken angry face,
the space person,
explorer of exponential nothing
with no memory of memory
and no dream of dream?

That’s right.
Put down your phone.
Refuse
to take a jackhammer to dignity.

May you
see me.