prompt 18 hour 18

thanklessgiving

 

picking turkey carcasses from garbage cans abandoned in alleys dirtier than the shirt stretched over his thinning frame, he prayed for something not decayed enough to poison him again on this thanklessgiving, again, alone but not alone with the others who sifted through these same cans looking for food or something to keep the gnawing from eating the lining of their stomachs

again.

why was charity reserved for the Christmas season when no one cared about any of that anymore? where was the gratitude for having when others don’t? he growled into his blackened finger nails, full of more to eat than the scraps of rotting something like food not good enough for those who thought nothing of tossing food –  thoughtlessly disregarded, like he was, too…all over a little thing or two to make him feel anything else but whatever it was he used to feel when those other feelings came back

again.

thanks was to be given freely for all having. he knew he was grateful for having what he had when he had it, whatever that was…places where he could go and be treated like a human being with a name that didn’t sound like “crack head”

again.

he put the lid on the can and walked away, remembering the days when he made turkeys out of construction paper tracings of his hand – days when he could still be anything he wanted to be in the realm of possibility beyond this thanklessgiving.

© r.l. elke