text: I didn’t think much of him the first time I passed him and gave him the leftovers of my egg and bacon sandwich. Five months later, I sat down next to him and pulled out a cigarette. "Want one?' I asked him. He nodded and took it from me. I took another and placed it in my lips while fumbling for the lighter I'd bummed from the convenience store. People walked past us, wrinkling their noses and staying a safe distance away. Last time I took a bath was last week in the park. It was getting colder now that winter was coming. “I got kicked out,” I said, pulling my hood up and rubbing my hands between my knees. He grunted in reply. “That so?” “He found out about my boyfriend. I left my diary out.” He chuckled and smoked a long one. “That fucker.” I started crying. The tears mingled with the dirt on my hands, streaking over the calluses like ugly brown worms. I no longer looked at myself in the mirror but today I had seen myself briefly in a donut shop window. My hair was matted and brown, and I had dark circles from months of bad sleep. Police uniforms haunted my nightmares when I slept under bridges that smelt of piss. Two nights ago a man had offered me $5 to suck his dick. Then he’d offered me $10 to let him suck mine. “Why’d the old man give you the boot?” the old man asked, between puffs of smoke. I wiped the snot from my face. ‘“Why? Because he thinks I sinned, that’s why. Because of his stupid fucking God.” “Ah,” the man said. “God is a cocksucker.” He laughed again. “Indeed he is. I’m sorry.” I laughed too now. “Why are you sorry?” “I fucked up,” he said. “I fucked up and created a whole bunch of contradictions and I fucked you guys all up because of my selfish desires.” He said that, ‘contradictions’, like he used the word every day and it surprised me enough I stopped crying. I looked sideways at him, sitting against the piss-smelling brick wall near the trash bins at the back of Lucky’s with me, and realized I’d never seen how blue his eyes were. Like while passing him walking home from high school I’d always noticed his straggly Einstein hair and dark, swarthy skin but he’d never been looking up. Now though that I was sitting level with him I could see his eyes under his black beanie and they were bright blue. “Son, let me tell you a story,” he said. “Once there was a star, and it began to grow. It grew and became more powerful and intelligent until it began to get lonely and bored. When it did it decided it would make more copies of stars like itself and so it did. But those copies were imperfect and therefore all flawed. They made stupid decisions and lived short, ephemeral lives. Over time that original star lost hope of true friendship with another star like itself and became apathetic. But it could never die, being the beginning of all, and doomed to live beyond all.” “So what did it do?” I asked. “It just sat and watched everything go by,” he said. “And it waited.” He turned and pressed something into my hand. Then he stood up and walked away. I opened my hand. In it was a calling card.