Here I Am...

HERE I AM Here I am in Southern Indianapolis, south of Morris street and just off of Union and Palmer. Here, among these hovels of the poor, this place called”Welfare Row” here, among the food stamp recipients and 15 year old mothers with vacant, lusterless eyes, here, in the trash-filled lots littered with crack pipes and lottery tickets here I am… Here in the shadows of towering double spires -steeples reaching Heavenward those steeples of the Sacred Heart Catholic Church so beautiful inside, luminous and all golden like a dream. Here I am, observer to this sharp visual contrast this urban irony, for next to it there’s a plain brick building fallen into disrepair and almost unnoticeable- once a convent, now, The Holy Family Shelter. And inside, there’s Kevin, proud, nearing 50 once prosperous and robust but after being shot during a robbery he’s fallen on proverbial “hard times.” and since nowadays disability is hard to come by, daily he drags himself looking for work- but so far, no luck. And then there’s Ayeesha, gorgeous, caramel colored, 20 years old and 3 months pregnant with her rapist’s child who also gave her herpes. What kind of future is there for her? For her unborn child? That question hangs in the air, thick and heavy like the stench of rotting food, factory smoke and garbage wafting in thru open windows. And what of Yvonne? ambitious and 40, traumatized but plodding on this housewife yearning to be a writer with a plethora of talent, but with much of her potential beaten out of her by a psychopathic ex-husband and now, instead of teaching literature at a local college as she wants to, she’s just another “battered woman” and would gladly settle for $7.50 an hour -anywhere. And let’s not forget Steve, slovenly, rude and annoying -no one likes him but he doesn’t care -he’s past caring, smelly and taken to outbursts of raving but- no one knows he was once a Special Forces Officer who’s “too far gone” (remember Vietnam?) to even collect, or much less handle any veterans benefits. And sometimes the 4 of them, -the entire neighborhood listen to the church bells, ringing clanging pealing reverberating like a heartbeat and it makes them contemplate. And sometimes the wind whips the city’s refuse about and they hear the sounds of a Styrofoam cup scraped against the road grating much like the grating in their minds of reality scraping against hope.