"Trash!"
The loud sound echoed into the cold night of the city. A man pushed Uriel out of the warmth of the coffee shop. The few people inside said nothing, nor the people who were walking across the street. Uriel had not done anything to break the rules; he had found a few dollars earlier and used it to buy a hot chocolate. If you bought something, they weren't supposed to kick you out. That was the rule. Uriel remembered it ,and yet he found himself on the cold sidewalk. He wasn't stupid. "I am not trash," he wanted to say but shop owner had already closed the door.
Uriel swallowed any words that wanted to come out, he had never been good at speaking to people and knew pleading would get him nowhere. Well actually, it would get him in trouble if anything. He felt heat on his face, tears that fell from wide-set eyes onto the pavement. Looking up, he saw the cup he had been holding on the ground, the hot liquid spilt. Uriel tried to save any that could be, but all that left of the heat from the coffee shop was on the cold ground. He used his scraped up hands to stand, a gust of wind easily shooting through his too large coat and making it hurt to breath. A sob wanted to come out from his chapped and ripped lips.
It was already hard to breath because off the cold. Uriel tried to stop crying as the wind stole away the bit of warmth he managed to gather within the low-lit coffee shop. Curly dark hair covered his burning ears, whipping at his face, faint freckles speckled across his nose despite his skin being ashen from the cold, full chapped lips that threaten to bleed with the slightest movement. Clad in too large and much too worn clothing, Uriel stumbled from the coffee shop.
No one cared that he was thrown out into the cold, no one would miss him. The coffee shop had been speckled with people all of which did nothing more than steal a few quick glances as he was thrown out. Uriel had tried to be careful and quiet, having tucked him into a corner from everyone's view, out of the way to bother no one. Anything to just sit for a few moments away from the cold outside. Weak from starvation, his youthful face gaunt and deep set from hunger and dehydration. His dark eyes had little light left in them, his soul tarnished by people just as the elements had worn on his body. By Uriel trusting those who tempted him with food, or trusting that people like the shop owner would follow the rules that the other street people had told him. The rules of surviving when no one was there to miss you.
Uriel thought it was because he was different rather than his homelessness. Although he didn't know the word, hermaphrodite or intersex he knew the words abomination, freak, and others thanks to the foster system after his mother had passed away. As if they had been stamped on his forehead, and people just knew by looking at him. It had taken a lot of pain and time just for him to figure out he was different. But it did not take long to learn the ultimate rule- that was his fault. For being an abomination. He deserved it. After hearing it in almost every boys' home and every foster family, it became his reality and his understanding that the punishment for it would never end.
What confused him, was how people seemed to just know he deserved it. Uriel could not tell that by just looking at someone, but then again he had never saw anyone who 'needed' to be hurt. That was how one of his father fathers had put it. That some people needed to be hurt, reminded that they were below the rest in the 'social order'. Maybe that is why people called him stupid. He didn't see what made everyone decide, and just know, who to look at with such mean eyes without saying a word. He'd never spoken to anyone about being different. He didn't know how to.
Just smile and be sweet. Just follow the rules. Just do as I say and you won't be hurt. Just be a good boy. Just buy something and no one can kick you out. Uriel followed the rules,yet he was always at fault, always blamed for whatever happened. Maybe he was stupid, a "retard" because he never knew what he did wrong.
Trash!
