When I came across this picture, I felt I had to write a story around it.

Empathy

What do you see when you're looking at me
if we happen to pass on the street?
Will you show some concern, our your head simply turn
in a moment of social retreat?

Will you greet with a smile or just put me on trial
and then judge me by how I appear -
convinced I've been served with the life I deserve,
in a setting so bleak and austere?

Will the face you behold see his story be told
in a flash of conjecture and myth -
so sure that a buck for one down on his luck
would be wasted on drugs or a fifth?

Would it help if you knew I was once just like you,
until gripped with the pain I conceal -
a love that would die in the blink of an eye,
when it's me who was holding the wheel?

Your pity's no cure for the nights I endure,
or the images trapped in my brain,
the horrors I keep that deprive me of sleep -
the emergency lights in the rain.

Where once was a soul is a dark empty hole
in a life I can never retrieve -
a target for scorn who stands weathered and torn,
in a state you could never conceive.