What's Your Poison?

It’s early, and Pikes Market is just starting to awaken. 

We sit, hands wrapped around coffee mugs, six mini-donuts on a plate between us.

 I’m tired. 

Staring at the donuts I notice

 maple

 is 

dripping

 down

 the

 side

 of the donut closest to me. 

The smell of frying dough fills the corridor we are sitting in. I succumb to the pull of 

the smell and I pick up one of the doughy rings. 

I raise it to my mouth, my teeth sinking through frosting and cakey goodness.

We have two hours to kill before meeting friends from Albuquerque for lunch. 

They are vacationing in the city, and we will be heading to Mount Rainier for the week. 

As we finish our coffee I begin to feel a restlessness. 

This feeling isn’t new. Each time we travel I feel an overwhelming, 

uncomfortable, yet unstoppable,

drive to experience all there is to experience in this new place.

As we put our dirty dishes in a dish bin I notice the corridor has filled with people. 

Locals and tourist mingle, exotic spices mixing with the smell of fresh fish, all watching the fishmongers as they put on a show with huge salmon, crabs, tuna. 

We wind our way through the claustrophobic crowd finally breaking out onto the street…

 relief as the sunlight brushes against my skin.

We leisurely walk toward the designated meeting place, 

stopping at various store fronts along the way. 

It’s early, and some stores are still closed, perhaps awaiting a more civil time to open.

Pete’s enlivened by the Pacific Northwest and he’s uncharacteristically talkative as we walk.

We maneuver the uneven bricks under our feet, Pete talking, 

me scanning my new surroundings.

I notice a man sitting in a recessed doorway. 

Beautiful creamy coffee colored skin. Haunting pale gray eyes. Matted, dirty hair. 

Leaning against the door, one knee bent, foot standing on the cobblestone sidewalk. 

He’s wearing a dirty white tee shirt, cutoff jean shorts, and inexplicably new tennies. 

I stop; he doesn’t look up. Intent on pushing the needle into his right forearm. 

I watch as he injects the soothing poison. 

I wonder what pain has been inflicted on this beautiful man to cause him to do such 

an intimate thing in front of strangers? 

For a moment my heart breaks for this soul…hurting, like so many of us, from the pain inflicted by those who were charged with caring for us.