Standing at the Corner of Mysterious Grief

I am standing at the corner of mysterious grief. It is in a neighborhood that I'm well acquainted with, but generally try to avoid. Nevertheless, I sometimes find myself standing here waiting for a bus that may or may not even be running at this time of night. I don't even know where that bus goes, but I will keep waiting as long as it takes. I am desperate to get out of this place.

As I await the bus, I look around. A peddler and a purchaser haggle over the price of a bottle of tears. A woman tosses a tornado of clothing and tableware and flowers out a window as she wails. A little boy sits on a gloomy stoop, unable to be cheered by his friends, unwilling to go with them to the basketball court. He seems to be stuck to that step like the gum he mischievously placed on the underside of his desk when the teacher wasn't looking back in the simpler days before he moved into this tenement. This is no place to raise a family, but it seems the neighborhood welcomes anyone and everyone with its dark embrace, so long as they have the capacity to feel. This is perhaps the only neighborhood in the entire world that has never known the sting of segregation.

I keep waiting and I keep watching.

I see people pausing to help one another with a particularly heavy load as they cross a street. Nobody here is doing well, but still they seem to want to help. Maybe it's because they're not doing well that they help. Even the little boy's friends, clearly not from this neighborhood and unfamiliar with its streets, dared to cross the tracks into this seedy little pocket of community - all because they wanted to help.

This odd juxtaposition of hurting helpers is just too much to take. The beauty is utterly heartbreaking.

I really hope that bus comes soon.