Assignment Number Nine: Conversation With a Stranger

(Credit to Jess Broadbent for helping me with ideas for this assignment...)

I can see him from my bench across the street. I cradle my coffee to warm my palms. He stands alone in the cold. Disconnected. Desperate. A solitary figure with a shabby woollen hat and a heavy orange sweater: his only shelter to the wind. He eagerly watches the swarm of black and grey float past in a blur of annoyance and anticipation. A man in pin-stripes walks by on his phone. A lady with auburn hair flicks her eyes towards the figure and quickly looks away. A child reaches out his hand in wonder. A moment of connection, broken, as the irritated mother pulls her offspring closer to her side and hurries him along.

Must avoid eye contact.

I watch from the safety of my bench. The figure’s haggard face divulges his pain. Grey wrinkles line his tough, weathered skin. His eyes lock onto mine for a few seconds, longer than is comfortable. I stare back, wondering nervously what stories hide behind that dead gaze. In that moment, when our eyes meet, I know what he’s thinking. Time seems to slow down to a deafening pause. He takes me back to his childhood: Bolivia, Ecuador, Columbia. Always moving, never settling. Displaced. Detached. He tells me of the death of his father. His move to England. The breakdown of his marriage. The spiral of endless failed jobs. The year spent sleeping rough under Blackfriars Bridge. He has felt more pain and fear than the sharply dressed man or the auburn haired lady or the mother and child combined. But nobody stops.

Must avoid eye contact.

His eyes drop. The gaze is broken. Time starts up again as the monochrome swarm of the crowd bustles past once more. I stand, stretching my stiff legs, like a cat waking from a long sleep. I drain my coffee and fling the empty cup into an overflowing bin nearby. My feet carry me across the street, winding through the crowd towards the figure in orange. My hand clasps around three gold coins in my pocket. I reach out to him and watch as the coins drop into his gloveless palm. He nods at me graciously and hands me a thick, rolled up magazine: The Big Issue.