Mark shuffled along the cracked pavement, his worn boots barely making a sound as the busy city buzzed around him. In a city so full of life, Mark was a ghost, unnoticed and unseen.
He tried to make eye contact with the well-dressed strangers hurrying past, but they studiously ignored him. Nobody wanted to risk having a homeless man ask them for money. Mark knew this, but he looked at them, anyway.
It was a game of sorts. Possibly a challenge. Or, maybe, it was just a way to remember that he was once a person like these, with a job and a nice home.
Those days felt like a dream now, but lately, Mark had felt the need to cling to that dream (He didn’t yet dare to call it hope, or even acknowledge that he wished for those better days. 