Brown Blanket

The following is a poem I wrote on the bus leaving Bloemfontein, South Africa. It’s about a man who lived alone on the street, most times I’d see him he was pretty out of it, sometimes covered up from head to toe with a brown blanket, fiddling around underneath it. I never knew what he was doing under there. I just know it was sad that he wanted to hide, & the only thing he had to take refuge in was a threadbare old blanket. I didn’t know how to help him, other than prayer. It was one of the most intense illustrations of hopelessness & destitution I’ve ever seen.

 

 

What is charity?

What is love?

Is it always the touch of a man who a woman has invented to fill a space and title he’s happy to fill when she finds him in the flesh outside of her imagination?

Is it always a kiss on the cheek from Grandma, skin delicate & smelling of black tea & housework?

Is it the ache when you’re far from people who know you better?

Or is it sometimes something like me resenting the guilt sitting heavy in the pit of my stomach, materialized as the meal I just had at the gas station while you sat there, quivering, covered by brown blanket from head-to-toe.

I know without asking you that your stomach is more empty than the blank space where I’m supposed to have answers to questions from atheists about why your suffering exists if there’s indeed a God.

I know you’re hungry because I saw you laying gaunt, back pressed to the concrete the other day, without your brown blanket, I assume you assume you’re unseen, even when you’re uncovered since no one seems to pay you any mind either way.

Without your blanket you laid with your belt holding up only tattered fringes that used to be pants, indecent by any standard, at least by the standards we’ve set since that day in the garden when we realized naked was something we should never be.

I looked but couldn’t find any fig leaves on the streets of Bloemfontein to cover you.

But you seemed to be

unbothered

unphased

unlike Adam on that terrible day.

Without shame.

 

You lay in your full exposure & look around hazily as you shoot up.

I look away but I can still see you when I turn my conscience upside down to shake out the contents & mourn missed opportunities.

I don’t know what was in your syringe but as it coursed through your veins with false promises of better days, it seemed to also run through my system, substance sticky but not sweet, heavy like a cinderblock on my chest, sticking to my ribs, but not like Sunday dinner.

Morose & discontent seemed to replace my breath.

My eyelids closed without recognizing they were consenting with the bystanders, not so innocent, especially me.

My feet disobeyed me as they carried on, business as usual.

My friend brought you fruit & water & Jeremiah 1:5 on a piece of paper.

She did good.

I never met you, but brother, I’ll never forget you.

You broke my heart, accidentally.

I wish I could pick you up, wash you, clothe you, feed you…or remind you that you can do that all yourself & God saw you the whole time.

Some people may deem that a noble desire, a noble pursuit but I’ve always wanted to be more than a humanitarian.

This is human.

This is humanity.

This is you & me.

But more than anything else, it’s God.

And don’t ask me how or why because I don’t have that many logical explanations for the ills of humankind & why we were given permission to bring ourselves to ruin (some call it freewill).

All I know is we all ate the apple from the tree we weren’t supposed to.

We were given over to selfish desire & from cradle we learn to dig our own graves with different shovels:

our personalized vices & struggles.

So I’m sorry.

I’m sorry that maybe no one told you that there’s a Genius beyond the exosphere yet closer than your skin with a beautiful plan for you & even if the drug is more tangible & promising than the prospect of a great & invisible God, consider that a lie brought on by the hallucinogens, ’cause I swear He’s your only hope, as He is mine.

I boarded a bus this morning to Durban, remembering you.

I hope you don’t die soon.

Because I want you to have time to come out from under your brown blanket, hungry,

finally accepting your invitation to the banqueting table of the Lord.

 

I’m sorry if your invitation got lost in the mail.

 

I’m sorry that sometimes the messengers fail.

 

But,

 

*come, eat, & drink;

 

drink your fill of love.

 

 

 

 

 

*Song of Songs 5:1