Part of it was the wind making waves of his oversized sweatshirt, and some of it had to do with the drips of drool dampening the expletives that came spewing from his mouth.  His mouth like a hole in his flesh.  But it wasn’t just that that brought on our sadness.  It was something more to do with the pedestrian unpleasantness of surviving another November that struck us so deeply as we watched the man, head ways on one side of the fence, feet ways on the other and his shirt sleeve caught in a wire spike at the top.

It had been November a lot lately.  Another box on the calendar, but every day in the same month as the day before.

We held our bottom lips between our teeth, wanting to weep, but not knowing how as the man’s head dipped dangerously towards the ground and his left leg lifted like the mast of a sinking ship.

We waited with the good will and patience we hadn’t had that afternoon while wading though subway traffic or talking with our mothers on the telephone.  Once in our lives we were wishing for something outside of ourselves to succeed, and we hoped that for that moment at least, it would be enough.