It's hard to live on this street.
The frosted wind blows through these alleys, carrying an icy punch that takes out those without shields. It always comes at exactly 10 minutes from now, ruthless and shivering. You learn to count the minutes after your first winter—ten minutes to find cover, ten minutes to wrap whatever rags you've collected around your bones, ten minutes before the wind turns your breath into glass shards in your lungs.
The sky isn't any better on most days. You would be lucky if it was sunny. Cloudy and chilly is most that you're going to get. If the sky hated you that day, it might rain, soaking you in its frigid embrace. Good luck drying those fabrics after; the sky certainly wouldn't allow you. The concrete drinks up the water like a thirsty animal, but your clothes—they hold onto every drop like a grudge. I've learned to read the clouds better than any weatherman. The gray ones with soft edges mean maybe you'll stay dry. The dark ones with hard lines mean you'd better find that overpass fast, or you'll be sleeping in puddles that freeze your skin to whatever cardboard you managed to salvage.
Even disregarding the uncaring atmosphere, the people here don't make things any better. Most men and women on these streets only care about themselves more than anything. Stealing and fighting are normal occurrences here. If there is no fight happening, someone probably died that day. The cop came to pick up the body and quickly left, blinded and unbothered by it all. I was robbed and beaten three times this week already. It was much quicker to just bend down and beg for forgiveness than to fight back; I learned it the hard way—this right foot no longer works normally.
But that was three years ago, when I still had something worth taking. Now I know the rules that the concrete taught me through split lips and broken ribs. You don't look anyone in the eye unless you're ready to fight or die. You don't sleep in the same spot twice. You don't trust the quiet ones—they're usually the ones planning something. And you never, ever show weakness to the wolves that prowl these streets after midnight, because weakness here isn't just vulnerability—it's an invitation.
Tommy learned that lesson too late. Used to see him by the dumpster behind the Chinese place, always talking about his daughter in Ohio, always saying she was going to come get him. The wolves heard him crying one night, heard him praying to a God that doesn't visit this part of town. Found him three days later with his face carved up and his pockets turned inside out. The cops didn't even bring a body bag that time—just a tarp.
Most shelters are a scam, given to the staff's family members or people they like. Sure, they will go on about how virtuous they are on the shop TV, but I have been applying for years now with some people, and all of us were rejected—too dirty, diseased, or full are usually the excuses. The waiting list is a joke—a piece of paper they wave around to make themselves feel better about the locked doors. Martha's been on that list for six years. Six years of showing up every morning at eight, standing in line with the same desperate faces, only to be told "maybe next week" by some volunteer who goes home to a warm bed and a full refrigerator.
The system isn't broken—it's working exactly as designed. Keep us visible enough for the donation drives, invisible enough for the real conversations. We're props in their charity theater, background noise in their symphony of good intentions.
Strangers who walk on these roads daily rarely give the citizens here any time of the day; to them, we are the road, invisible and inanimate. But they at least sometimes throw us a scrap, a piece of food, a penny, or anything they have by their side. Whether these are acts of kindness or just ego, none of us care. Food is food, and denying food is to embrace certain death abound.
I've become a scholar of sidewalk psychology. The woman in the red coat every Tuesday—she'll drop a dollar but won't meet your eyes. The businessman with the briefcase—he crosses the street before he gets close, but sometimes leaves a sandwich on the bench after he passes. The joggers pretend we don't exist, but the old man walking his dog always nods. It's not much, but acknowledgment is food for a different kind of hunger.
You learn to read the pavement like scripture. This corner gets the morning sun. That alley stays dry when it rains. The vents behind the laundromat blow warm air until ten PM. The security guard at the bank building changes shifts at midnight—gives you forty-five minutes to rest on the steps before the next one kicks you off.
Disease runs rampant around these parts. Without access to anything, most of us have some type of skin infection or some strange disease that we neither have the money nor the acceptance to treat. Cops also come around to collect these bodies, but they take extra care with the corpses. I guess this is the better way to die rather than being uncaringly shoved into a van.
The sickness isn't just in our bodies—it's in the air, in the water that pools in the gutters, in the shared needles and communal bottles that pass from hand to hand like toxic communion. My left arm hasn't felt right in months, some kind of rash that spreads like spilled ink across my skin. But the emergency room costs money I don't have for problems they don't want to solve.
Janice had the cough. Started small, just clearing her throat more than usual. Within two months, she was spitting blood into old coffee cups, her chest rattling like dice in a cup every time she breathed. Found her one morning curled up behind the pizza place, still clutching that same coffee cup, red and empty. The city truck came for her body like they were picking up garbage—efficient, emotionless, routine.
You could find a dirty needle or two just by walking two steps; some of it is medical, but most are drugs of some substance. In the void of hopelessness, people turn to drugs to somewhat forget, but I only see them as an agent of faster death, a shortcut to the peace that takes too long to find naturally.
The needles tell stories if you know how to read them. The fresh ones near the school belong to kids who still think they're experimenting. The bent ones behind the liquor store are from the desperate ones, the ones who've given up on clean anything. The broken ones in the park belong to ghosts—people who were here yesterday but won't be here tomorrow.
Death is a common thing; most of us no longer react to it. If someone died, we just moved on with our days as if normal. Emotionless is not a way to live, but in this hell, it is a necessity. You count the faces each morning not out of friendship, but out of inventory. One less mouth competing for the soup kitchen line. One less body taking up space under the bridge. One less voice in the chorus of the forgotten.
But sometimes, in the quiet moments before dawn, I still remember their names. Carlos who used to sing Spanish lullabies to himself. Linda who saved newspaper clippings about her hometown. Mike who could fix anything with his hands but couldn't fix the demons in his head. They become part of the concrete now, their stories absorbed into the foundation of this place that builds itself on broken dreams.
For most of us, life here is a nightmare that none of us can escape. We somehow ended up in the pit of hell without knowing and trapped by our own minds. All of us used to have family or friends, but there aren't any souls that have been "rescued." No matter how much they miss, how much they beg, or how much they pray, giving up is better than clinging to whatever false hope they concocted inside their mind. Their "kind" family won't be coming to help them.
The phone booths don't work anymore, but I still see people standing in them sometimes, holding the dead receiver to their ear, having conversations with dial tones and empty air. Sarah does this every Thursday. Talks to her mother for twenty minutes, laughs at jokes no one told, promises to visit for Christmas. The line's been disconnected for four years, but hope dies harder than the body.
This kind of life change turns most people into either a worm lesser than human who can only beg for handouts, a parasite to most people who is only there to make their perceived social image of the city worse, or a ruthless monster who steals, kills, and robs even the most innocent. I am not certain of which path is worse. But to me, even parasites have their uses in some cases. But monster, I am sure I won't become one; however, even I am uncertain.
The transformation doesn't happen overnight. It's gradual, like rust claiming metal. First, you stop showering regularly because the public restrooms are locked or broken. Then you stop caring about the smell because survival takes precedence over dignity. Your clothes become armor—layered, patched, practical rather than presentable. Your voice changes too, becomes smaller, more apologetic, trained to deflect attention rather than command it.
I watch the new ones arrive and recognize the stages. Denial first—this is temporary, just until they get back on their feet. Then anger at the system, at their family, at God. Then bargaining—maybe if they try harder, wait longer, pray louder. Depression comes next, heavy and gray like the sky that never quite clears. And finally, acceptance. That's when you know they're here to stay.
It wasn't long since I ended up here—a missed payment and a missed call sent a spiral toward me that blew me to this dark part of the city. I used to be a man with power, higher and higher above the poll, not at the top but not as below, quickly falling from grace in a single day as everything spiraled out of my control. Three years, I ponder, but even thinking is a luxury here. If you don't think about where you're going to sleep, you'll probably end up dying from the cold; forget food and you will starve; get too much and you'll be robbed and beaten.
Three years of learning that the distance between the office building and the street corner is shorter than anyone wants to believe. Three years of understanding that the safety net everyone talks about has holes big enough for whole families to fall through. Three years of discovering that rock bottom has a basement, and that basement has sub-levels that stretch deeper than any architect ever planned.
The city moves around us like water around stones, flowing past our stillness with practiced indifference. We become part of the landscape—urban fixtures as permanent and unremarkable as fire hydrants or stop signs. The seasons change, the weather shifts, the politicians promise solutions, but we remain, rooted in place by circumstances that compound like interest on a debt that can never be paid.
Only after surviving your first full cycle—winter to winter, one complete revolution around the sun—can you think of something different. Only then do you earn the right to dream of escape, though by then, most have forgotten how to dream of anything but warmth, food, and safety. The luxuries of hope and ambition become foreign concepts, languages you used to speak but can no longer remember...
The fact that you are alive, is the only consolidation prize.