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I nod and smile back. It’s all I can offer.

I’m lost in a day dream as I sit in The Wayside Chapel café watching a young bloke eat a bowl of ice cream and another man picking his toe nails, and I catch my shadow in the corner. Can my back get any closer to the wall? Can my legs be crossed any tighter? I’m hugging my body like I dare not let go……because I feel deeply unsettled.

I am clean, healthy, sober, happy, safe and loved so I should be grateful, but ‘There for the grace of God go I’ rings hollow on this corked tile floor of open arms and distracted hope.

As I gaze around, on a table to the front and right there is a rough sleeper talking to an absent, invisible mate about his love of music and at the top of his voice, straight out of the blue he says; ‘If people have got some where to live, they have hope.’

And bang, I snap back. My syrupy, self-indulgent musing makes me swallow spit in my immaculately manicured mouth but here the soul is brought back by a bloke in a bad hat and a stained, ripped shirt. A woman walks in with feet that seem too painful to be upright on, as an old Asian guy with a long pony tail and a Mao Tse Tung, pork pie hat wanders past me and starts playing the piano in the camouflaged chapel behind. A haunting, beautiful ballad of longing, loss and hope. And slowly, quietly I come back into who I am as a man, and humanity in the space around gives me peace.

A younger lad with a Jesus beard, and a skateboard under a skinny right arm, argues with an imaginary brother in his head. He wants to talk to me but he knows I have nothing vital to say. I don’t need to talk, just smile and listen to the unanswered chatter around me and the promise of a shiny, Western city falls away, because the propaganda we furtively believe in is a lie, and this is the truth in the men and women sitting nearby. A community of no us and them.

So I stop for a moment and breathe, and listen again, and how I feel and how I act does not matter, and I understand my discontent, understand the irritability.

The pollen, dust and rain of Kings Cross floats around the big, bold tree out front, like a halo of forgotten, childhood whispers and tonight as these unique, courageous souls leave the warmth of The Wayside Chapel to sleep on the rough, hard streets and in the dark, damp parks, I will hop back in my car and head home to my beautiful wife.

An old fella wakes up from a fitful sleep on a chair propped up by the wall, and he scratches a grey, dirty beard and mentally prepares himself for another uncertain night. He looks at me and smiles a small, sad smile. I nod and smile back. It’s all I can offer. Anything more would be hollow.

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Visit Wayside Chapel: www.waysidechapel.org.au

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