Worth Loving

I used to think life was simple.

When I was a child, I skimmed over the surface of life never suspecting the tragedies that lay beneath it. I was unaware of the fact that houses were splitting open with chaos until one parent went left and the other went right and children were left standing in the wreckage. I never knew that sharp edge meeting flesh was the guilty ache--the one release--that some of those my age had found. I was ignorant of the cuts that went past the flesh and into the soul, the aches that throbbed harder in the night than in the day, the bruises that marred not skin but self.

I am an adult now, and I am aware. 

And today I am aware of you, boy. So painfully aware. I see your lips struggling to remember that M and N follow L, and that a string of letters still come after that, that P plus E plus T equals "pet," that life can have any sort of surety when you feel like a balloon cut loose in a charcoal sky. You hear the thunder.

What's more, I am aware of your shame as you tear the envelope bearing your father's name in the first line of the return address into tiny pieces, afraid someone might see that it also says "Inmate Correspondence." You can't read, but you know that much. 

They found the letter that was inside on the bus, boy. It must have slipped out. I have never read so much heartbreak, so much pain, so much raw and hungry love. And the grief of it? I know that you can't read a word of what he's saying to you.

"Boy, you keep that safe. Put it in your pocket. You're going to want that letter when you grow up. Read it with Grandma, boy."

There is no shame, child. Pick your head up. 

You are worth loving.