Budapest, April
He moved from bin to bin
like it was a ritual.
Not frantic—
not ashamed—
just practiced.
As if the garbage had memory,
and might offer back something
he once lost.
I saw him take out a Starbucks milkshake.
That—I couldn’t unsee.
So I gave him money.
Enough for a meal,
a hot one.
Even enough for a room—
maybe, if he wanted to rest
from the weight of being seen
At first he didn’t understand,
but then he took it.
Nodded.
No smile.
No thank you.
Never mind.
But he looked at me
with eyes that had seen too much
for one lifetime.
I thought—
maybe I changed something.
Just for a day.
But he walked straight to the next bin,
as if my gesture had passed
through him
like wind through paper.
That’s the trance.
Not his alone.
Ours.
A tribal trance.
Not addiction.
Not madness.
Not choice.
Just the mind
learning to survive
without expecting anything
to change.
It’s what happens
when you’ve swallowed too many apologies
from cold systems,
when you’ve heard “help is coming”
in a thousand forms—
and it never came.
And so,
even when it does—
when it stands in front of you
in the form of a stranger
who means it—
you keep digging.
Not because you need to.
But because
you no longer know how to stop.
We want gestures to matter.
We want kindness to break the spell.
But sometimes,
the spell is older than the kindness—
deeper than the cash,
thicker than the warmth
of a single moment.
So what do we learn?
We learn that giving
is not about changing someone.
It’s about not being changed
by a world that tells you
to look the other way—
even when someone silently says:
please don’t pass me by.