Friday, October 4, 2019

he pulled his shoe off and propped his injured foot up on the chair in between us.

"are you any good at bandaging wounds?", he said as i reluctantly looked at the puss soaked bandage in front of me.

"i'm not a doctor, *john*, but i'll see what i can do."

i tried to take the bandage off with care but i soon found out that he preferred the 'rip off the band-aid' approach.

it didn't look good. to my dismay, he had a nickel-sized hole in his big toe. i covered that baby in polysporin, bandaids and bandages and recommended that he get some real help as soon as he could. he promised he would do so the very next day as he hobbled his way to the homeless shelter where he planned to spend the night.

what i didn't tell you is, how, as i was, again, very reluctantly playing doctor, he was telling me of his frustration with his current 'housing situation' and how it wasn't fair that he couldn't find a place of his own.

that's the thing, and the very point of this post; under every bandaged foot lies a deeper need & underneath every social justice issue lies a busted, broken, unfair system.

so what do i (we) do with that? i'm not entirely sure, but i will keep bandaging feet until i figure it out.

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