People You Step Over

The concrete remembers my weight

Even when no one else does

I sleep where the streetlights flicker

Because darkness costs too much

I had a home once

With walls that didn’t echo

With mornings that tasted like possibility

Not recycled air and yesterday’s breath

People pass me like I’m a stain on the world

Eyes forward

Stride wide

As if suffering might cling to their shoes

If they get too close

I count the footsteps more than the hours

Because footsteps have faces

Hours don’t

I’m one of the people you step over

The ones you pretend you didn’t see

I could be dying on this frozen pavement

And you’d only hurry past me

I’m one of the people you step over

Skin cracked by a thousand cold nights

But you fear the dirt on my fingertips

More than the hunger in my eyes

There’s a man across the street

Holding a coffee worth more than my week

He won’t look at me

He stirs his sugar like a ritual

Of forgetting

A woman drops a bag of bread

Not for me—

Just by accident

She glares when I reach for it

As if my need insults her hands

I swallow pride until it tastes like blood

And pretend this corner is a choice

Because lies are warmer than truth

I’m one of the people you step over

The ghosts you fear will speak

You tighten your grip on your privilege

Like I’m trying to steal your week

I’m one of the people you step over

And still you judge the way I crawl

But falling isn’t ugly—

It’s refusing to see that is the sin of all

You don’t know the names I’ve lost

The beds I buried dreams in

You don’t know the voices I answer

When the night asks why I’m still here

But you’ll judge the dirt on my knees

Long before you ask my story

I’m one of the people you step over

But I used to be someone’s flame

I used to laugh so hard I cried

Before the world forgot my name

I’m one of the people you step over

But I still wake up, still try, still breathe

And every breath is a rebellion

Against the ease with which you leave

If you knew who I was

Before the fall

Before the cold

Before the silence

Maybe you’d see me now

Not as a shadow

But as a story

Still trying

To be told