There she was carrying the weight of a space filled with giggling hearts and ruptured hopes on her tiny shoulders. It felt as though she was running from things that break man and rips him from his own skin. I could feel the weight colliding with my heart with no idea what it was. It burned like sorrow, like needles hungering for a vein to drink from.
She had no idea what life was though she shouldered this load with a strength that I didn’t possess nor did I have the heart to bear. I shuttered in amazement wanting to do more but could do nothing so I held her. The room felt small as her sorrows calmed like a southern wind blowing against the tall meadow grass where I played as a kid watching it sway back and forth.
As she lay there in my arms with those naïve tears streaming, I wept for the innocence that she was born to lose to a world that she would fall into a moving bus to save. It would be these same cartoon faces who would ridicule and trample her emotions like pieces of candy dropping to a dirt floor. Her tears still trickling as if they were raindrops pouring out of a bloodthirsty sky, and perhaps they were, perhaps the levy walls finally gave in to the pounding, or perhaps she finally understood her strength and these were tears of joy.
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