Alone

He stuck out this thumb on a dark highway shoulder, pointing a prayer up to God on the end of an unchecked, grimy thumbnail, and hoped for some kind of anything. The sun was beginning to settle into its bed for rest and colored the sky like the drunken distractions of a Christmas tree strung with cheap lights. His feet crunched loose gravel, the wind kicked across his denim jacket and whipped the frayed ends of his hair around and around, and the silent highway stretched forward and backward and didn't judge or comment or lend a hand to his path. The thumb, hitchhiker sign style that has a desperate pitch and poignancy in the gesture, was just for practice. Heck, he'd never taken rides from strangers and really never needed one until now, until this point, until this path became his walk. The road was barren and removed from care, the wind was enacting revenge, the light of day retreating, the underfoot gravel barked insults from the countless footsteps; where was the circle of fate to rescue him from days and nights of bad calls and wrong ways and diluted decisions? Fate had lost interest and he was walking against time, marked alone.