I know a kid who tosses yesterday
into the trash that’s held the past 18 years of his life
counting on today to change,
counting on today for hope
that his prayers will finally reach God’s front door
and tomorrow will be different
but it’s been the same
since he was eight years old
when his innocence died
along with the person that gave him life.
His childhood
and his mother
both too soon.

Now loneliness lives in his soul
and happiness seems to only exist miles away in his memories.
Memories are the only places where she’s still alive,
where she’s still listening to his endless and pointless stories,
where he’s still 4 feet tall and fits into her arms perfectly,
That was where the word family wrapped them tight together.
That was love.
So he walks around looking for that same love,
but nothing he finds feels forever,
he quits before they quit him,
he leaves before they leave him.
He doesn’t think he can make them stay
because he couldn’t make his own mother stay.

I wanted to tell the little boy in him that I would stay,
that I would love him,
but I knew that I couldn’t love him long enough for him to stop feeling the pain,
long enough to make up for the lifetime of love he lost.
So instead I say,

“I know,
I know what it feels like to be alone…”
but I stop when I feel him staring at me with his heavy eyes
and I turned away too soon.
Not being able to handle the truth in them
and he says to me,
“You don’t know,
you don’t know what it’s like to not have an umbrella when you’re walking home in the rain,
you don’t even know whats its like to not have a home,
and you don't know what’s it’s like to cry like a child for a mother you didn’t have enough time to love.
This loneliness
is felt by the few still looking for a love they know they will never find again
and I happen to be lost in it.”

Yet
I envy him
because it can only get better from here,
where he’s still standing,
half wounded from memories he made
and the memories he never got to create,
and I know he’s standing on a one way street to something more than life allows him to have.
I can tell by the way he speaks that strength was engraved into his soul that day,
that same strength that will carry him to success,
yet he still thinks his soul is so close to sinking,
but I know now it can only float.
He will take his dreams up with him and send them straight to God's front door
because God must have missed his prayers like so many times before,
but his story isn’t over.
He is an unfinished book.
Ink from his broken heart will bleed onto the empty pages
and lead him to so much more.