I was interested in this image, by edgeplot, via Flickr, because sometimes when I look I see the figure of a man in the gray brush. As for the words, they're a record of today.
Man with no hands
“That was God talking.” The first thing the voice says. Not a preacher’s voice. Troubled, but with what? It tries to talk smack with one of the regulars on the street, who walks past fast with a stride that says, “Don’t get any of that on me.” Peripheral vision won’t curve back far enough to put a clear face with the syllables clinging to the wall behind, but the hair on the back of the neck, the whole back of the body, rises for sensing, follows the movement. Voice narrates the bus that pulls up, more about God, God’s pain. Driver gives him a look—how much trouble is this going to be?—and lets him by. There’s no money on offer, no coins dropping. Just stripped wrists placed on farebox, paired knobs so narrow without the bloom of palms and fingers below. The abruptness of the stumps. We all let him pass without looking back to see where he lands. Soundings from the voice: the seats above the engine far behind. Mumbling a while, then picking up, roaring. “So much fuckin’ pain.” More and more words, in another character's voice. Yelling all the way to the valley. Anguish and everything else. A laugh. No one looks. What’s he gonna do, pick up a gun? Until an old woman rolls her cart back there. Her hearing’s bad, but not her eyes. Not the mother in her. “It’s all right honey,” she says first to her daughter, then quietly to laughing, suffering God. “Sweetheart, it’s all right.”
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