Outside the white lines

I could find my compassion if you navigated between the painted white lines--your clothes clean, your body showered in the recent past, your manners in tact, your conversation pleasant, maybe inspiring.  But you, Charlie, invade from the shoulder—your smell bludgeons my neatly packed van, makes me nauseous. I shutter as you place your filthy self on the corner my vacation bed.  Though you paint yourself as a quiet sort, you talk without a breath for the 90 minutes you ride . . . crazy talk about Jesus and how you don’t have a family or a birthday, and hate men.  You ramble with the road about your recent heart attacks though you can’t be more than 28; and then rail about the roommate who’s asked you to leave because she cannot stand you sequestered in your room for a month at a time.  You scare me with the long package you cling to, wrapped in a blanket, worth a quarter of a million dollars so you say.  You complain about a government that poisons its people with toxic food, and your solution to make all retailers work in the fields for five hard years.  Then you melt talking about the woman who’s stolen your heart. I search for a soft, generous patch of compassion to keep me from stopping the van and screaming, “hit the road you weirdo!”