Leave me behind as you do is because of my fault. The fault you saw in me is the one you said you'd fix, it's the fault you spoke to me about while we sat on the bus, and I still had a smile, and a home, I still had ambition and curiosity as to where I belonged. I sat and stared out the spotted window and saw a man on a bicycle, and the bicycle made a sound both wooden and metallic against the side of the bus, and the lump under the wheels did not come with the crunch I would have expected.

You were the first one off the bus, left my side to see the remains, you looked so pale under the white sun and I stared up at the sun and watched the first fingernail of an eclipse and wondered how soon I would go blind.

"I would never have said that to you," the voice said and I looked up to see the pale, smudged skin of the man who sat in shadows under the Maple tree begging for change every day, the one you walked by and the one you yelled at once when I gave up a ten. On the bus, he never asked for money.

"What did he say?" I asked, and I watch you as you hold the dead man's hand on the street, the hand is twisted and flecks of blood and specks of flesh spatter your skin.

What a fellow, I think. What a man to hold a hand like that.

The Homeless man has read my mind and he touches my shoulder, and I do not cringe, and he says, "It's no heroic feet to hold a dead man's hand."

"Sure it is," I say.

"Go and live," he replies, "without him."

"Why?" I ask.

"Cause he's best with the hands of the dead," he says.