The Stump

He stood leaning forward, the left leg before the right, the right hand behind the left, the left holding a glass that he occasionally gave a jerk to, a slight upward jerk, enough to keep the coins tinkling, enough to keep the audience momentarily engaged with the misery he personified. They flow around him, he stands like a stump in the river, unmoving.

His shirt is a faded blue and he has trousers, biege maybe, but old, which make it difficult for one to say for sure. He has a pair of sandals, surprisingly well kept. His eyes are deep into the pits, they struggle for existence, they battle with the furrows on his forehead. His hair falls in shocks
over them. Those eyebrows must be raised, for he appeared to be looking into nothing, the nothing that the evening local crowd carries home over railway bridges, the nothing that is found in the eyes that look to settle over the tube for the rest of the night, the nothing that fills his stomach, and his life.