youthful homeless man on the corner of wilshire and sixth,

there was something about you that made me want to say hi. and to ask how you were. and this is me, the boy who was too scared to buy something from a cashier alone until he was eleven.

but there was something about you that stirred the inner steve lopez. i think it was your eyes. i could barely see them in the dimly terracotta lit street with curly and unkempt blond hair wildly spaghetting off your scalp, but there was something in those globes of mediterranean blue. a glint of saturday morning looney toons and ballpark afternoons. a glint of kid.

you laid your linearly framed bike against a shooting palm tree. plastic garbage bags, black and worn, lightly crinkled against each other. you had a box of pizza, dinner i guess, from little caesars. three pieces inside. and i could feel myself getting full after watching you eat those three hawaiian slices.

the way you walked was different. there was no droop in your tread, as if every step asserted that this would not be the life you will perpetually live. your shoulders were pulled back and expanded your ribcage to the polluted heavens.

you left quickly, after you finished eating. i didn't stare for too long as you folded the now-empty little caesar's box in half to fit in the granite trashcan and straddled onto your bike, but i caught one last glimpse of you as you passed by me. the early summer night lost in sapphires.