FicWad

I saw you the other day, standing on the sidewalk, this vacant stare in your eyes like you weren't even there. You knew you weren't headed for anything positive, and headed for nothing you wanted, and you could tell that you weren't going to be getting out of it. These thoughts clouded your mind, and clouded your eyes, the window to the soul. Your soul was dark now because of this, and the light in your eyes had long since dimmed. You might as well have been dead, the way your eyes no longer lit up anymore.

You stood there, in your old hoodie that wasn't even yours from the beginning, the one that had belonged to someone else nearly a year ago, the one that didn't even zip up, with the little hole right above the left cuff, yet you still wore it, and didn't bother to sew up the hole or to replace the zipper, even though you most easily could have. I knew that you only wore it in times when you needed comfort, and by the look of the thing, you'd been wearing it nonstop for days. Had your life gotten that bad since the last time we spoke? I don't even know, but I didn't have the nerve to ask you, like the coward that I was.

Then, the light turned green and the flow of traffic continued, and you faded out of view, slowly, a shrinking speck on the side of the road.