Existentialism and Taco Bell

The man sat on the curb of Taco Bell at 7:30am, body folded in on itself, crouched down with knees to elbows. His head was in his hands, between his fingers the hair was buzzed close to the scalp. A woman in cornflower blue nursing scrubs and a black jacket pulled across the soft lines of her body. Her arm was around him, like she was pulling him close but she stared straight ahead. It hurts less if you look away. After a few minutes so did he, tears drying in the momentary quiet. They both looked out at the cars passing, lights changing, and felt the wind sting their eyes. Both their faces were heavy, solemn things cold in the morning air. It felt like I watched him age twenty years in the time it took for the bus to pull away from the light. He was thin, body swallowed up by the prices on the menu board, the cars passing them by in the drive through, and the weight of the rising sun. It shone down on his back almost a divine spotlight, and it laid clean the exhaustion of being alive every day. The beauty in that struggle.