the small child

There was a small child lived about the bridge area, took great solace in the passing water. His parents were long dead and he was only a child, but had built some life for himself from out of the troubles. He sheltered in places various and embraced their dissonance and the idiosyncrasies of each and every night, and sometimes woke with the sun and at other times was kicked awake by drunks or drenched in their falling urine or stunned by their bayed insults or sometimes by the rain or other elements, for the climate about the bridge area could be cruel as most things could. He survived on scraps found or sometimes stolen, pizza crusts, the spilt salad from kebabs hastily necked, wilted lettuce, tomatoes of ferocious blandness, thick circles of raw onion, ends of banana shed with their skin, single chips trampled flat at one end, a ramshackle diet of the unwanted or the dropped. He adhered to a strict code of personal ethics which prohibited theft, a code to which he tried hard to adhere, his diet built exclusively of the wares of the street, but sometimes basic physical need would overtake him and supersede the efficacy of the code, and he would creep invisible into the larger shops and pocket very small items and apologise under his breath as he did it, and later sob himself dry as he chewed them slowly, the products cloying and unbearable as they wove their guilt around his mouth like cobwebs. He bathed in the waters of the river longing for the holy, and shivered naked on the bank waiting for the air to dry his skin. He watched other children walk with parents through the daffodils and blooming crocuses and felt some scorn but he would not blame them or wish their happiness absent. The world would gain little should his misery be shared. He waited patiently for the day the water would rise to take him up.