There is a story. About an old man on a bench in his county jail cell. He looks up to see the cracks in the concrete and prays for rain to wet his mouth. He looks down into the dark corners of his cell and sees possibility in the unknown. He gazes through the bars until they are no longer there. All he sees is you. On the road by your house, running with a hankerchief in your hand, holding it out in front of you like it's the most important thing in the world. He sees, in his memory, The night when you fell on the ground and got rocks stuck in your hands. You cried for hours.
You cried when you came into the world, you felt the weight of the world on your tiny shoulders and it was the only pain you can remember. The marks left a lasting impression. It's in how you move, how you turn around a corner and see everything waiting to be realized. The light shines from your face. The dangerously distorted face, to resemble a childlike innocence. You cried for relief. You were given rain instead.
There was a winter through these parts a while back. No one remembers it from any other one but I do. I remember all the men and women in their dark clothes and darker faces travelling through the alien snow. The white, untainted snow that only lasts for a minute before the world turns it to a dirty, undesirable slush that just lays on the ground. But you floated on.
And as these noisy shackles shuffle their way to the last corridor of the hallway, I knew in my heart that you were what I could never be. And it made me smile. I was willing to die for a principle. You died everyday for so much more than I will ever know.
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