#uncoffeed...

He was in the park, laughing and throwing seed to birds. Pigeons swaggered awkwardly around him like old men hanging out on corners. Two stroller-pushers - mothers or nannies - swerved wide with mild alarm, as if the inappropriate happiness of this old man on the bench might harm their babies.  "Bread swells in their craws," he said, looking up at me,"and will kill them. Rice, too. That's why people throw bird-seed at weddings." Willard held up the small paper sack to me, but I declined. He pulled more seed from it and broadcast wide; pigeons ambled forward, pecking and deliberating. He had endless obscure facts, and I wanted to sit and listen to all of them. This time, though, the little man in his practical suit who sat in the park every day had little to say. He just smiled with childlike wonder, admiring the birds as if they were a committee he was orchestrating or an orchestra he was conducting. He'd look up at me from time to time, knowing ...

Some men attacked him, forcing him from his below the bridge home. He wandered aimlessly. He was a  #troll  without a bridge. On a whim, he boarded a train headed north, luxuriating in the plush seats & all the delicious conversations flitting around the train car. - Jonathan Roman @deft_notes Gaping impolitely at a giggling woman with a young man whispering into her ear, the troll heard a voice over his own shoulder. "Ticket, please." The troll flinched, causing bugs and bits of riverbed to shake out of his grizzled hair. The voice came at him again. "I need your ticket, sir." A smallish person came within the troll's view, hand extended. "Sir?" The troll was surprised by his own voice, which sounded like gravel rolling underfoot. He'd heard himself roar, and snarl, but never words. He made shapes with his lips to speak them. "What's my ticket?" The smallish person sniffed, and pushed smallish glasses up a tiny ...