Manna

He's an old, dirty man propped uncomfortably on a low wall along the few-inch space where the notorious red metal fence met concrete. He'd pried open a box of rice and sundry and was shovelling thehard-to-come-by morsels into a grateful mouth.

She's a flower passing the square by, skirting around his pile of multi-coloured crocus bags, a treasure trove of all he owned in this world except dignity, besides sanity.

Up ahead the taxi drivers gesticulate under a heavy, grey sky--"An' I had was to tell he! He self!"--a woman sits bored, waiting to dip into coolers of ice, a girl woman politlely asks if perhaps one would liketo buy school books for the children.

She's a flower stopping to ask the bored woman to dig into coolers ofice for a bottle of water, and by the way, a small bottle of juice? Yes, that one. And straws. Two.

She follows the red fence, comes upon the old, dirty man, smiles, stops.

"Here," she says, offering the juice like manna.

He looks up, eyes widening in the quiet disbelief of a man used to asking, eeking, finding, surviving, grains of rice clinging to his lips and beard.

"Thank you," he says from down in his throat where surprise stifles reaction.

She smiles. He settles the drink on the ground, balances the straw onhis lap, his meal as complete as her day now was.