Homeless Not Hopeless VII by MikeFShaw on DeviantArt (original) (raw)

Haunted

I have been haunted by this image.

I was in Covent Garden not so long ago, walking down the road when people seemed to part as if Moses parted the Red Sea and I wondered what was going on. Then I saw him, a giant of a man, dressed in little more than rags and looking as if he had not seen a bed or a bath for most of his life. People didn't even look up at him, they just moved out of his way as he strode through, almost as if he had some purpose.

Everyone was wearing blinkers, refusing to look, it makes them uncomfortable. But he was there in front of me and I just raised my camera, woefully unprepared and he just stared as he walked on. I wanted to stop him, to talk but something told me that would have been fruitless, he was on a mission, stopping for no one.

When I got home I looked at the image, so badly taken, very underexposed but the chance meeting if only for a fleeting moment told me I needed to see. When I managed to get at least something I felt like I had been hit hard in my stomach. He was gaunt, so very gaunt, under that dirty twisted beard and coat there was a man much younger than me. His eyes not that of someone hardened to the streets but f someone just lost. I noticed his mouth was opened as if to say something but I know nothing was said.

You feel as you do this so often you become numb to it you don't, you have reminders that come along and make you realise you will never become numb to this. And you remember just how much those cuts really hurt.

Its an image I had to try and save, others need to see it.