The loop

There I was, sitting on the street, waiting for my ride home, when I saw the future him. Tattered and dishevelled, lost, confused, broke and broken. With a hoarse voice he talked, eyes hazy, yet with an intelligence buried beneath all the smoke, like a sun hiding behind the clouds. He talked, and I listened, and I felt this sadness overcome me, because he's what's to come.

It's a dull, muffled pain, as though it came from a life past, from a different point in the loop of life and death, a different name, a different face, the same soul.

I gave the man some food that he didn't really want (the money, I just need the money, I can buy the food myself). I saw the way life ravaged his body, tore his insides out, and wondered at what point he became such a ghost of himself. Maybe in a room full of smoke and trash bags. Wondered then if it was a moment, if there was a before and an after, a point in time where he was irretrievable from the fog. Wondered if anyone could have stopped it, wondered if anyone would have cared, if he was alone because he burned through people like matches.

The man left and I watched him go, wobbling like the street was made of jelly.