WA 5 draft 1

The cold winter air is stinging at my face. My grimy, matted hair spilling from my skull like pieces of thin, bent wire, scraping all the way down to my gnarled, blackened hands. The only thing that groans more than my stomach is the wind as it rips through my tattered clothing. I have only one shoe from which a frozen dirty toe protrudes. A heavy snow falls as I stumble past 13th street and make my way to the church. A warm place with loving people and plenty of food. While walking up the main stairs to the church entrance the sweet sound of an organ blesses my frostbit ears. Opening the heavy wooden doors brings a rush of warm air filled the aroma of incense. I take a long deep breath of holy air and as I look up a hundred eyes stare at me. There are no welcoming face offering me food and shelter, only eyes that isolate me. A beautiful cake rests on a table tantalizing me. An peculiar silence suffocates the hall and is only broken by the jingle of the 36 cents in my pocket. The priest asks me to leave explaining that the wedding is a private gathering. The groom examines me as if I were an animal. That’s what I am to these people. A different species, a soleless outsider. I tried to explain that I would be quiet and not bother the ceremony. However the groom now enters the conversation forcefully commanding to leave using such language as “vermin”, “beast”, and “savage.” I became enraged by the paradox of the salvation of the church. Distilled hatred, lust, and hopelessness spilling forth from my every orifice. My mind, driven by hate, driven by envy sent a signal to my clenched hands. I lunge at the groom scraping his face with my long filthy finger nails. We scream together now my agony can be shared with another pitiless soul. He begins to push at my face with a soft tender hand. Ravenously I sink my teeth into it, tasting the first meal I have had in days. Like a dog I attempt once again to fill my hunger but many hands grab and restrain me. I resist with the force of a man with nothing to lose. Several men wrestle me to the door and throw me onto the ground. Snarling and grunting in disgust I curl into a ball. I feel a lone tear freezing on my face and falling into the snow. It is welcomed, accepted and disappears. I lie lonely, hating the animal that I have become and let my cold lonely and loveless heart beat its last beat.