The Magician (Poem)

The magician sat hunched over on a curb.
His robe slowly soaked up gutter smells,
and billowed slightly in a fitful wind.
Despondent, denied, and dejected
he held his knees between unseen hands,
tucked into enormous sleeves.

Pigeon gray water gurgled and flowed,
tugging lightly at his hem,
while his sigh carried miles through cramped alleyways and open fields.
Crumpled in his lap,
folded in half,
lay a pointed hat, bat-black and powdered in dust,
powdered in frustration.
His hair looked like a bunch of broken wires,
haphazard and unkempt,
forgotten in the fray of failure, and largely ignored for a lifetime.

The magician's eyes, the color of dates drizzled in honey,
stared numbly at his hands,
half-curled fingers paused in motion,
forehead wrinkled like a crumpled paper flattened.

"What did you lose?"
a small boy asked beside him, curious head tilted in question,
suddenly seated beside the magician.

Startled, the old man twisted his head sideways,
and stared at his curbside intruder.
Wide-eyed, nervous, the boy held his breath,
for he had never been this close to magic.

The faraway look took in the scene only a span more of minutes,
until, with a look laced with hesitation,
and edged with a cruelly-sharp edge,
the magician responded: "Everything."