Once They Were Boys & Girls

I'm nice and comfy and cozy in this plush red chair at a coffee shop in Waterloo. My laptop is on my, well, lap, I have a coffee in front of me, fun music playing, and there's pretty girls to look at.

But outside there is a homeless, or at least down and out man sitting on the ledge of the coffee shop.

There has to be more than loneliness and heartache for such as these - the depressed or otherwise mentally ill, those who have no one to talk with or worse, to come home to.

Once they were little boys and girls, full of promise, full of dreams. They got up on Saturday mornings and watched The Smurfs or Care Bears while scarffing down PopTarts. They skated on the backyard rink for hours practising their slapshot.
The whole world was theirs for the taking. Or maybe it wasn't. Maybe from an early age they were forced to take care of an alcoholic mother or protect their little sister from an abusive father.

I don't know, but somewhere, somehow, sometime these little boys and girls stopped dreaming, stopped living, and now they're just putting in time, punching the punchclock of life at the end of the day with no sign of a happier tomorrow.

My answers tonight? I have very few. Just a quiet prayer for the man sitting outside the window at the coffeeshop.

...there must be a reason you are here.

Sent from my Tricorder.