Wendell

This is a piece I am working on for an article on prayer. I think tis excerpt is winding up on the cutting room floor, but this experience is dancing around within me and I want to preserve it here as I work through it...

Below street in the Subway station, I see a man, Wendell (the second syllable accented, not the first.) He is black as pitch, tall, broad, solid. I have seen him before in photographs of the homeless. His bulging eyes, the result of his hyperthyroidism, gives him away. I see him, turn away, repulsed, turn back and smile my biggest smile...Hey, I know you! I proclaim. I look him in the eye. I can only bear to stare in to one eye. His eyes straining out of his skull urged on by his hormones' insanity. The white orbs pull the surrounding red, raw, flesh out of the socket. Pulsing white eyes, angry red flesh, midnight black skin. You know me? He smiles a huge smile, blushing, grinning, shy. I explain I have seen his picture and I ask how he is. Aw, you know, doing alright...he looks down at the cardboard sign he holds with scrawling letters explaining his plight. I can only look up in to the one eye. He flips the sign over and a flash of writing catches my attention...what is that? I ask...he demures, does not want to say...my curiosity bests his humility and he explains-Do you know poker? A little I say. He tells me about this one hand he always plays and always loses on. In big letters he has written "do not play this hand!" I spend a lot of time alone he confides in me and sometimes, I need to keep myself busy...writing this down...keeps me sane...I can only imagine what his hell is like with nothing other than feigned poker hands to keep him company and even in those he loses. For a moment I see us standing there, talking like old friends. Laughing, intimate. I wonder how others around us see this. He is monstrous to look at but for a moment, they see me seeing him as normal. Do they think twice? Can they too see the humanity of this beautful man alone in the subway playing poker to keep sane? My train comes, I shake his hand, squeeze it warmly like a hug, wish him well and blessing, step in the train, pull away into darkness, dissolve in to tears. Seeing God is frightening, awesome, painful, wonderful. No wonder the Israelites flitted back away from the Mountain. Sinai can really mess you up.