Don’t try to hide, I know what you’re doing. I’ve done it myself a million times in another life time a million years ago. You spot a vagrant in your path and decide that you will show no fear. Keep up my pace, avoid eye contact, just as you would walk by an unfriendly dangerous stray dog.
I know what I look like, not from a glass mirror but from the puddles in the street that reflect a wavering vision of my dirt-streaked face, skewed hat and hair that is matting unwillingly into dreadlocs. I scare myself, but even scarier is the version of me that I see in your reaction. I can get lost in your fear and for a moment feel sub-human, like a desperate creature capable of striking out and harming anyone in my way.
I know that look in your eyes. You fear and pity me; you despise me for eating off of the streets; you congratulate yourself because not even by the grace of God do you think you could be in my shoes. But the truth is that I have no grace and there is no God on the fall from the top of the corporate ladder to the half-eaten sandwich at the bottom of the garbage can.
Yes, I said it, it’s good Friday and God is dead. On the third day he will rise again and perhaps I will too. Perhaps my third day will come.