I grab my dark skinny jeans and big fuzzy sweatshirt. I pull my jeans over the rough stitches on my leg. They are fresh and the skin is still bright pink. The sweatshirt hurts as it moves over the gashes on my arm. They are fresh too, still leaking red when they are pulled too hard.

I walk out into the busy city with cars zooming on the street. I wave to my neighbor on my right who is out getting his newspaper. He waves back with an arm covered in blood, just a stub of a hand. With his other hand he holds a large knife. It is covered in his crimson red blood. It drips onto the newspaper that he is reaching for.
I stop a taxi and sit in the uncomfortable back seat. The driver asks where I would like to go. He has dirty rotten out teeth and tired eyes. The radio is on a station that doesn’t get through to us, it is airing static. He drops me off at a coffee shop. A man with a large grey suit on opens the door for me. He is wearing a hat. It is a stylish hat that looks comfortable. I see blood running down his head and onto his formal attire. I watch as the blood is soaked up by his tightly sewn jacket. His hands are covered in black powder and there is some on the cuffs of his jacket. He lifts his hat to me as I walk through the door. He has a large wound on the side of his head. There is a small hole cut through to his brain. I can see inside his skull. It looks soft and wet with blood and other matter. I smile and thank him for holding the door open.

I hear the soft murmur of the other people in the coffee shop. I walk up to the short counter and order a large cup of black coffee. The women behind the counter hands the cup to me. Her hands are dry and pale. There is a large dark tattoo covering her left arm and there is a small needle with off white liquid sticking out of her arm. I see the glimmer of silver stuck inside her skin. The coffee cup is warm in my hands.

I sit at a green round table in a soft chair across from me sits a child and his mother. The child has short blonde hair and his left eye is bruised with purple and a sickly green color. His nose is bleeding, bright red runs down his nose over his small lips and drips onto the lap of his blue jeans. He is playing with a toy police car on the table, driving it around. His lips move as he makes sound effects for the car, it leaps into the air and crashes down on the table. His mother has stringy light brown hair her lips are chapped, her eyes are sunken into her face and are quickly scanning the room.

She has a small plate of food; a half eaten sandwich. She looks down and lifts an empty cup to her mouth with her slender arm. She vomits silently into the cup. She uses a napkin to wipe up her mouth and tosses the napkin onto the carpeted floor. Her eyes are empty.

I turn my head and see a man sitting in front of his computer. He is wearing a purple jacket and it is pulled high covering his dark eyes. His face droops and he’s posture seems exhausted. I watch as he opens a ziplock bag filled with white pills and puts three in his mouth swallowing them with his cup of coffee. He relaxes at his computer. 

After my coffee I leave the shop looking for a taxi to take me home. There is a man laying on the sidewalk. He has brown work shoes, dark blue jeans, and a plain blue t-shirt. His face is mangled and unidentifiable. Pieces of his skull are shattered and torn from the rest of his body. His blood pours out into the street. There is an older woman leaning over his body. She is sobbing and shaking. She yells to the sky, “Why!”

I look up and see an open window about nine stories above the sidewalk. I watch as the grey curtains flows out into the air.

He bleeds out. She sobs. We walk on the street and she sobs.
We walk. And she sobs. She screams. She is in pain. We were oblivious
The man with a bullet wound cries in agony.
The child shakes against his mother.
The women behind the counter is paranoid.
And my arm bleeds through my sweatshirt.
We are hurting. We are oblivious. Our pain is exposed.