Dead Life

One day while doing nothing more important than walking nowhere, he crumpled to the sidewalk and died. He didn’t notice.
No one else did either as he turned to see a stranger slumped sadly on the sidewalk.
He’d seen many of these unknown husks–––but they concerned him no more than the leaves that blew around his feet, always silent, gathering, then moving on and sometimes, strangely beckoning him to catch them in their tornado of energy and spirit of which he could not conceive and so did not enjoy.
Nothing gave him pleasure or made him question the origin of his next breath. No one spoke to him, or he to anyone else. Why? He didn’t even ask this question.
And so it was that he kept going, wandering the same blocks of life-less houses, past people who did not see him and sounds he could not hear until one day his spirit tripped over itself and he found his foot lodged inside this husk of a man, cigarette dangling from his swollen lips, arms spread out as if welcoming him home.
The spirit got down on his knees, strangely comfortable in this skin. He smelled, like piss, cigarettes and dirt, tasted blood on his chapped lips. He could hear the passing of footsteps and cars. The sun touched his face and he felt the warm urge growing in him and then let go.