The Picture

They had always told him never to return if he ever got out. Good thing he had listened to them. Where were they now? They had all fallen by the wayside. If his childhood had left him with anything, they had taken it with them as one by one, they disappeared and he was left with the nothingness he had come from. Why did they leave? He hadn't changed. Had he? He didn't even know anymore. He lay on the bed, allowing himself to sink momentarily into the hopelessness that had been tugging at the corners of his mind for so long, he couldn't even remember when it had begun. How nice it would be to just let himself go. After all, there was nothing left for him here, or anywhere for that matter. As the pool of despair engulfed his senses, threatening to drown out even the intermittent gunshots in the alley below, he looked around wildly, hoping beyond hope for something, anything to hold on to; something to which his wretched existence could cling to avoid slipping beyond the point of no return. A flash of light startled him out of his ever-deepening stupor of self-loathing. It was nothing but a beam of light reflecting off his treasured sign that vanished as quickly as it had appeared, leaving him in the never ending darkness. As he turned to lie back down on his bed and allow himself to wallow in his own despair, a dusty picture caught his eye. Almost completely hidden behind the sign and an old leather dog collar, he had forgotten the picture was there. Though the picture was worn and faded like everything else in his life, the face of the woman in the picture shone with such love and vitality that his legs seemed to melt from underneath him and something stirred in the empty cavity where his heart had been.