‹ Prequel: In the Month of May
One-Hundred Days
Day Thirty-Seven: Innocence
The innocence paints a smile across the faces standing in front of me, all too young to realize why I'm here and the gravity of the words I have no choice but to say.
Their older friends and siblings stand in the background, understanding and silent. They blend into the white brick of the walls behind them, cold and supportive in the worst of ways.
They are all a part of the same being, a family that has been torn apart and stitched back together thanks to neighbours. A community has been made into a family, resembling a patchwork quilt, each person their own special fabric and design. The younger ones are blanketed in the soft support, warm arms wrapped around their small frames as I stand at the front of the room, unwilling to say the words that I have been sent here to say.
I have been here long enough to see the innocence of the older ones shatter on the concrete, pushed backwards by words meant to be said and unavoidable. I've seen their once always dry eyes cry for the first time at their beginning look at the other side of life. I've seen their smiles disappear and their wide eyes go shut. I have seen innocence drain from their faces, slow and steady, as the appearance of age makes its debut on young skin.
I stand in the front of the room, before a patchwork family of beggars and workers, adult and innocent. I clear my throat and grab my heart, twisting it to go back to my own innocence. It turns into my lung and coughs and sputters, tossing blood up my throat to be spit into cloth.
I focus my eyes on the floor and let go of my innocence. It floats into the sky like a balloon away from my vision.
I let the words I was sent here to say fall to the ground below me.
As I walk away, I can hear the seams of the patchwork quilt ripping.
I can hear the innocence of a hundred children crack into a million pieces on the concrete.
I watch as my own innocence disappears into the sky, a single red balloon.
Their older friends and siblings stand in the background, understanding and silent. They blend into the white brick of the walls behind them, cold and supportive in the worst of ways.
They are all a part of the same being, a family that has been torn apart and stitched back together thanks to neighbours. A community has been made into a family, resembling a patchwork quilt, each person their own special fabric and design. The younger ones are blanketed in the soft support, warm arms wrapped around their small frames as I stand at the front of the room, unwilling to say the words that I have been sent here to say.
I have been here long enough to see the innocence of the older ones shatter on the concrete, pushed backwards by words meant to be said and unavoidable. I've seen their once always dry eyes cry for the first time at their beginning look at the other side of life. I've seen their smiles disappear and their wide eyes go shut. I have seen innocence drain from their faces, slow and steady, as the appearance of age makes its debut on young skin.
I stand in the front of the room, before a patchwork family of beggars and workers, adult and innocent. I clear my throat and grab my heart, twisting it to go back to my own innocence. It turns into my lung and coughs and sputters, tossing blood up my throat to be spit into cloth.
I focus my eyes on the floor and let go of my innocence. It floats into the sky like a balloon away from my vision.
I let the words I was sent here to say fall to the ground below me.
As I walk away, I can hear the seams of the patchwork quilt ripping.
I can hear the innocence of a hundred children crack into a million pieces on the concrete.
I watch as my own innocence disappears into the sky, a single red balloon.