I often feel like I cry more for other people than I do for myself.

He was a traveler, as they say, or homeless, whichever term you choose to use. Back of the bus with his art drawn on plywood and his dog, fingernails dirty and shorts ripped. His phone rings, and he picks it up.

For the next five minutes he talks to someone, and eventually raises his voice and my attention swerves from my book to his anguish. I don’t judge you for selling crack, he says into the receiver, but you let me spend hundreds of dollars on a girl I thought I loved while she goes to you behind my back? You cut our friendship when you didn’t tell me she’d never love me more than a glass pipe.

With that, he shuts his phone and hangs his head. My heart lurches, wrenches for him, but I know I can do nothing. I long for soothing words to say, anything at all, but I know he has chosen his lifestyle and with it, his social group. I can do nothing.

I get up to get off the bus, hand on the railing.

“Bye,” he says.

“Bye,” I said, and I smile.

“Maybe one day I could get to know you,” he says. “Maybe one day I could buy you a drink.”

“Maybe,” I say, and the bus doors open. “Hey… it’ll get better.”

I expect him to say something but he doesn’t, he just looks at me.

“It’s not your fault.”

I cried for him while I bought my groceries.