He Doesn't Need That

This was late November.
Hadn’t snowed in a while
but there was still some left
along the roads, beaten
and hardened into craggy slush.

I saw a blind man
with a backpack strapped on
start to cross the street. But first, he had to
cross the snow.

He took one step on the ice and slipped, fell forward.
He didn’t use his arms when he fell
so his face hit the ice directly. His cane
toppled with a kinkle and the glasses skipped
across the cold sidewalk. His backpack
came to rest on top of him.

Me and another guy helped him to his feet.
I gripped the flesh behind his elbow while the other guy
pushed from behind. He was heavy, the backpack was full.
“I’m alright,” he said, trying to smile.
He said his name was Tom. “Dumb ice,” Tom said.
There was blood coming from his nose
and was spreading in between his teeth.

A number of other people arrived.
One tried to replace his glasses, which were bent
with one lens loose. They placed these in his hand.
Another person put the cane into his second hand.
A third extracted
Kleenex from her handbag
and tried to stop the mess on his face.
The blood came out in lines like water.
She’d wipe it away and new blood would come out.
He was licking it, tasting the blood, and he must have tasted it
very well, I thought.
“You might need a stitch,” she said.
The blind man tilted his head back, and allowed
the Kleenex to rest, stuffed in his nose.
She produced a Band-Aid and put the
Band-Aid on the blood, secured it to his
cabbage cheeks.

Someone shook off his hat and placed it onto his
head. Adjusted it so it was straight.

Then a final person arrived and
held something out in front of the man’s
face. It was a mirror. A hand mirror.
She wanted him to see
what had happened to him, or how
bad it was or whether he was still bleeding.
This was her form of service.
He simply stayed tilted up though, looking
nowhere, trying to hear whatever he could
to make sense of what had happened to him.

“I’m alright,” he said again. “Thank you.”

“He’s blind,” the girl with the Kleenex said,
pushing the mirror away. “He doesn’t
need that.”