He strides up to the counter full-force: a lanky, honey-skinned man radiating pure joy.
“May I get some of that coffee, please?” He offers a styrofoam cup, a brown trickle stained on its side. HIs grin stretches beyond his cheeks—almost lunatic.
I smile—it’s infectious—and pour him some coffee.
“Thank you, ma’am!” he nearly sings. He lopes off and splays himself over a chair, immediately starting a conversation with the man at the nearest table.
The next time I see him, I join him at his seat. We talk some, then the next week we meet at a library to continue our conversation. This is a man who’s well-and-truly driven by his faith in a higher power. If he lives homeless by choice? You could say so. But I’m continuing to see that this idea of a choice is more complicated than it seems.
Even now, he emails me at least once a week with updates and random blurbs of thought. A lot of them have to do with his ‘preaching’. It’s a continuation of that idea with Ramero, that people think of me more often than I may think of them. I would say that I think I’m actually the only person he talks to, emails, can call a sorry excuse for a friend. But I see him in the community room at MP and he’s always the liveliest one, the one who goes out of his way to meet new people and engage in debate. I hope that even through his on-his-own lifestyle, he has other people to turn to when he needs.
I last saw him last Monday, 2/20. He was the same, jubilant-faced as ever. The night before, Austin had seen near-hurricane winds and rain. He talked about his adventures surviving it—I told him I’d heard the thunder. It sounded scary.
Chao,
Isabella, 2/26/17
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