Street Prophet

By -

Isaiah leaned on an empty bus stop, empty now of its usual crowd of commuters. Between the fingers of one hand he held a smoldering cigarette, and with the other he wrote in sharpie on the wall. 

“You know those things’ll totally destroy your lungs.” 

Isaiah straightened. A teenager stood next to him with earbuds in hand, out for her morning run. She gestured to the tube between his fingers. He didn’t say anything, just turned to face the road and took a long drag of his lung-destroyer. 

“I mean it. You should look it up on Google. Those pictures’ll get you off them in a snap.” 

Isaiah turned to look at her again but didn’t answer, just held her eyes steadily. She shifted uncomfortably under his gaze for several seconds, until he finally turned his eyes back to the road.

She shrugged, relieved that he had turned away from her. “Whatever. I was just trying to help.” She glanced over at what he had written. 

“What is this stuff anyway? It doesn’t make any sense.”

Isaiah just sighed out his last breath of smoke.  

“Whatever.” She pushed her earbuds into her ears and began jogging again, white sneakers thumping the ground and highlighted hair swinging. 

He dropped his cigarette butt and ground it out with his toe, leaving an ashy blemish on the sidewalk’s cracked face. 

Knowing an action would have consequences didn’t stop people from acting. Isaiah knew this better than he knew himself. 

When that girl got home, she would find out that her mother had been cheated on. A month later her parents would sign the divorce papers. 

Isaiah walked back to the bus stop and pulled out his marker again, the last two letters rubbed out so that now it just read Sharp. He wrote the last few lines on the side of the bus stop in jagged print, his shaggy hair hanging over his eyes as he sheathed his sharpie and turned away. He lit another cigarette as he walked. 

Most people wouldn’t even notice the Sharpie on the wall, and most of the ones that did wouldn’t bother to remember it. Very few would remember and wonder. He wondered if they would heed his message. He doubted it. No one ever listened to him.

Warnings, messages, prophecies, no one ever acted on his words. At least not in the right way. But he still wrote, he still spoke. He scrawled the future in subway stations and bathroom stalls. Hope still clung to him, dragging him through the city sidewalks and public alleys. He did what he could, leaving his words behind him as he wandered, praying with each breath of smoke to be heard.


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