Making Choices

The Washington Post has weekly feature entitled "Autobiography As Haiku". It's my first read every Sunday. Sometimes the short pieces there are humorous, sometimes not. This one was uncomfortably honest:

"I debate which path I'll take to the Metro. I can go straight and pass the man waving his paper cup, calling out "nickels or quarters." Or I can go through the park where the men eat food from the white, beaten-up van. The eating men remind me of babies drinking their mothers' milk. I want to go through the park. I want to feel their humanness and witness their existence. I want to acknowledge they were born and will die. I want to love them. But I go straight. The nickel-and-quarter man is much easier to ignore."