2 girls

The first one showed up some time in mid-summer, crazy eyed and barefoot.

Needed money for shoes, or foot surgery. Needed foot surgery but someone stole her shoes.

The panhandling with the awkward story, fabrications around a morsel of truth, with a bit of cliché sprinkled on. I would never.

She came on hard, with a speech like one of those long-term homeless and that flat affectation.

No cash. What about one of the cash apps? Or a banking one? Follower her on her social media. And then something political, half-baked and filtered through from its original cogent set of ideas and critical analyses to the intellectual frauds, the political exploiters, to the popular culture, to the social media discourse for the youngest generations.

She was taking a gap year maybe, part-time on the street. Couldn’t get into the college she wanted, or dropped out of high school. Posts on her social media from a middle class existence.

She kept coming back to that particular strip just down the street from the park because there was enough foot traffic, there was always new faces. Families, bohemians, the poor by choice, street dwellers, extras, and the ones waiting for their words to conjure a revolution while we all slowly die.

She came in the late mornings and was never around after dark. She didn’t venture into the park where panhandlers had fruitful circuits. Alms for the poor, detached from religious obligations. A political obligation, maybe. A moral one for sure.

Politics are morality. I hear boasts about disowning parents over bad politics at coffee shops. I don’t think they disown the money. Having a family is political.

The coffee shop I like is run by a big family with lots of women. There was one I was smitten with who made my day every time she’d smile at me, which wasn’t a lot. She must work really hard. It’s exhausting.

So is panhandling. So is doing nothing. They say that’s life. That’s a lie. It’s capitalism. That’s a lie too.

The second one showed up late summer, on her loops. She was the prophet, who killed herself to become who she is being.

When she first started talking I assumed she meant a physical loop, like the ones we all do. Or a chemically-induced loop, like the one some of us do sometimes.

She said things like the lack of change is death but so is change.

-There are technical difficulties with the electric chair.

That stuck with me.

She pickpocketed one of the circuit panhandlers so the street dwellers started shunning her, or pretended to.

The first one said I looked homeless, or dressed it. At least I didn’t act it.

The second one taught me how to be the now of me.