The Orphan

(First line from page 29 of On The Road)

He never saw it, and if he had he wouldn't have cared, he was so sad and gone. He lost himself a hundred years ago in the sirens of the city, too impersonal to get his name right. The system tried to "save" him but didn't really see him; it was no loss when that smudge of a boy just wasn't there anymore. On his own, he watched the masses slide by endlessly, and realized no one had a name or he was the only one without a name. No one ever saw him again, not that he disappeared but that he never existed in the first place. He lived off scribbled garbage and unloosed refrains of conversations hinting at reality, somewhere. When the repetition became too much, he lost his understanding of words and lived off the growling of his stomach and his mind. He grew old without growing up, grew primal without growing savage. He was too lost to be a ghost, unattached to the world by body, past, or future. He was the sadness of the lack of sadness in being no one. When the birds came to pick at his gray skin, almost kind for noticing him, he let them, never knowing they were there. He was alive as a cosmic joke and God is a weeping comedian.