Content to just sit and listen

He wore almost all his possessions around his neck but walked with no sense of burden. The straps criss-crossing his chest seemingly holding him together as opposed to weighing him down.

What connections did he have to the stories we told one another? Critically I would say very few...yet phrases from his mouth conjured images of a far away time of stability and hope. As the three of us sat on the couch I watched him. The way he moved and spoke was different then I had seen before. He displayed personality and individual thought; everything that before had been shadowed by the cloak we all gave him.

It all made me wonder how he got here. What could have possibly happened to his man to produce the homeless person before me, capable of speaking to a total stranger; making comparisons between our lives so superficial and yet all he had to give. I listened, transfixed by every word. I focused my concentration as if on a child describing something they had discovered about the world. But a child has limited glimpses of this world. This man has met hundreds of people, done hundreds of things, yet he sat before me in a confusing state of limbo. All innocence gone but so ignorant (or oblivious or not caring) about the society around him.

Where does someone, such as this man, belong? In the land of civilized children there is no room for his profane crudeness. In the land of civilized adults there is no room for his unknowing inattention to the rule book of society's norms.

And so he comes and sits on the couches of society and he adds his two cents when given the right encouragement. As he spoke I felt as if listening to something profound, though an outsider listening in may not have agreed. What he gave me came from all that he had to give, and I felt content to just sit and listen.