With my class this year, I volunteered at Project Homeless Connect in San Francisco. This is an amazing event that the city holds in the Civic Center about every three months. People who are less fortunate can go there and get a lot of resources they need, all in one place for free. It was so meaningful for me to have the experience of volunteering there. I got to interact with people who I thought were so different than me but actually weren’t. This is a vignette that I wrote from the point of view of a man who is homeless but gets help from Project Homeless Connect.
A Flicker of Hope
One thing that I love are smiles. They are like a flicker of light at the end of a dark tunnel, a flicker of hope. When people smile it means they are happy. I don’t smile much. I sit on the ground in the pouring rain and think about that one night that changed it all. When I look into the windows of brightly- lit houses that glitter like stars on a clear night, I think that could be me. I want a voice. I want to stand strong. I want to be able to smile with the corners of my mouth lifting up like birds flying to the sky. I see business men marching around like an army of ants in fancy black suits. I want to be part of that army but I will never have that chance. I have given up hope. When I sit on the sidewalk that is cold and hard-so unwelcoming- I try to rummage up some hope but it just doesn’t work. When I do have some hope, hope to put in a glass bottle to keep safe, hope that might change my life, people shatter it into a million pieces, pieces that won’t go back together no matter how hard I try.
I hear about something called Project Homeless Connect; I don’t really know much about it except that it says that it will help me. Maybe this is the hope, the chance that I have been waiting for.
When that day finally arrives I get up early and go to the place called the Civic Center. There are people who are lined up like penguins, huddling close together to keep warm, people who have come here for the same reason I have. All of a sudden I realize I am finally out of that tunnel, the sun is shining bright, and I can smile.