They discarded him in a puddle on the gurney by the window, crumpled between a mass of robes and linen, tangled in a mess of bandages and tubing. Lights painted him in shades of yellow and blue.
Eyes shut, skin taut, ash tongue protruding from a barren mouth. Between arduous breath his withering husk would let out a moan that cut through the pandemonium of the ER room, straight to the bone.
For three days he lay there, alone and wasting away. What sins could he have committed in life to warrant such a wretched, malevolent, shameless, aganozing end?
The sins of an unremarkable life perhaps, committed by an ordinary man. A man who listened to what the world told him and did what was asked of him; a man who sometimes questioned, but never acted; a man who strived too little and withdrew when the goings got tough; a man who was often selfish but sparkled in moments of good deed away from the spotlight; a man who loved deeply but only once, if you could call that love; a man who in his aging days mourned a life better lived, and let out his rage to the people he held dearest to his heart; a little man, who was too proud to say sorry, even when his better half passed and his offspring drifted away; a foolish man, who lived in his well and found comfort in stories of the world beyond; a pitiful man, who never rose above the confines of his birth and never strayed far from home.
Life is sorrow and thorns.
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