Although age and poverty had taken its toll, when far away an interrupted cry woke him from his sleep, he shuddered. He knew he lacked boundaries, was too easily empathic. That tendency had led him to panhandling in the evening of his life. It was getting more and more difficult to arise from his seated position on the sidewalk and retrieve his upturned hat from the pavement before him.
Someone at the Center had stolen his flute, so he had nothing left to offer passersby than the one song he could remember all the words to, Old Man River.
The children still stood round and begged their parent for a dime to drop into his hat. The children stared. The adults avoided his eyes. He thanked them all.
128 words
NANMYKEL.COM 
Have you read As I stepped out one Sunday morning by Laurie Lee? This has a vague reference to it.
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No-thanks. I’ll look it up.
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Petru–I can’t look it up just now. I’m locked out of e mail and Google because I forgot my password again and I resent having to pay to get a new one (phone charges). Maybe I’ll come across where I wrote it down soon. The only beggar poem I can remember is one about a beggar giving his starving dog half his sandwich and the lady angry that he didn’t appreciate it.
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Fair enough. Sorry you got yourself locked out. Best regards.
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I don’t know what to do about your email situation. If I had advice I’d have given it. It’s going to have to be Google to get you access back into it again. I think clicking on: ”Forgot Your Password?” may give you an option to let Google know you’re locked out. Hope you have an alternative email they can send a link to, in order to create a new password. If you haven’t, it’s wise to do so, purely for these reasons. It happened to me once before as well. Else, use a friend’s if there’s one close by where you live?
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Thanks, I’m trying to work it after pouting. Maybe I’ll get a tattoo of my password…
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We are always turning away it seems. (K)
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I think it takes a child to see the beauty in humans…
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Yes, and they are often color blind.
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What an excellent write for the prosery prompt! Good use of the line and you’ve painted a true person in so few words here. I especially like the detail that it’s hard for himto rise from his seated position.
As host for OLN though…I have to make the reminder that for OLN each person can only do 1 post. This is your second. For all the other prompts, quadrille, prosery, poetics, MTB on Thursdays, folks can post as many as they want…but only 1 for OLN. Just a reminder for next time 🙂
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Thanks, but I wasn’t sure where to post the flash fiction. Where should it go in the future?
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It would be posted with the prompt for it…But if Mr Linky is closed for that prompt by the time you get ready, then the next best thing is to post it for an OLN….which is what you did. Just post it as your only post to OLN.
Hope I explained that?
Any time I miss the deadline for Mr Linky for a prompt, I save it up for an OLN and then it’s the only post I do for OLN and I mention somewhere in the post, that it was written for the dVerse prompt on such-and-such date.
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Tanks for the help Lillian.
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Nan, if you go to the post that talks about prosery/flash fiction, there is a separate Mr. Linky to post it at. BTW I like your story, sad as it is.
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Thanks so much for the info. I came across another prosedy story in amongst the OLN entries, so I thought that was the way to do it. Someone rescued my entry, however.
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You are welcome and awesome on the save 🙂
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