Found this on my desktop this morning. I wrote it over the summer after a conversation I had with a homeless man in a park one evening:

“Save people? You can’t save people. Take a walk around,girl. You listen to some of the stories around here and you’ll want to kill yourself too. You’ll be in the pits, just like the rest of us.”

“With all due respect, sir, I’ve heard them,” she said quietly. “I hear these stories every day. But I choose to believe that maybe, just maybe, by meeting these people where they are I can show them that hope is real. That we can be hope for people when all of theirs seem spent.”

The homeless man looked around at the handful of aching souls scattered on benches throughout the park. “And what about these folk?” he asked. “What hope do you have to offer them?”

“The belief that that better days can still exist.”

“Pah!” the old man snorted. “That’s preposterous. They’ve hit rock bottom. Most of them are addicts or drunkards or criminals. Or all of the above. You truly think they can just get up and start over? They’ve hit the end of their road, woman.”

“But they’re still walking.” The young girl smiled ever so slightly. “Their story’s not over yet.”