El solo entre nosotros

Somewhere under the gray sky, as the rain continued to fall for another day after so many, I woke up in the dark and figured it out. His face was exposed, and I saw him. Once I realized who he was, I laughed.

In that same day, for better or worse, I was left to face him alone.

I know now that I can defeat him. Perhaps this is the only way. I only hope that my victory is not marked by a terrible, terrible loss.

It's too easy to be angry at that which we cannot understand.

*

There is nothing so strange and yet oddly delightful as singing random Disney songs off key with your roommate. Who knew that I could so easily remember the words to "Be Like Me" from The Jungle Book?

*

His name was Roberto. He didn't live very far from the park at all. His house was a beautiful place - twenty beds, lots of trees, fresh air, open to the sun on warm days. When it rained he had to leave, of course, and find someplace with a roof, but he always came back. Visitors always came to his house and he, out of curiosity and some loneliness, always talked to them. In his dirty jacket he held several folded pieces of paper, worn smooth so many readings, letters from the many strangers-become-friends that he had gotten to know over the years. The letters were addressed from different places - far-off provinces of Argentina, Israel, Germany, the United States, Brasil. In his head, beneath the combed-back gray hair and the smiling, stubbly cheeks, he held the many stories of his life - his beautiful wife, his son murdered in the streets. The stories came from many different years - before he knew the police, before he moved to his house, before his wife left this earth. When I first met him he was in the middle of composing a poem for Kiki. Who knows how many he had dreamed over the years in his gray head and lost to time and memory, never once leaving them upon paper?