He's little and skinny. He has glasses that make his eyes seem bigger than they are. He smiles at you in an amused, cunning kind of way. As though he can see a light shinning in your eyes, and knows how to make it laugh. His hands are bigger than mine. They reach out past my fingers, brushing over the tips. The only part of him that is bigger than me. So when my hands curl into his, he smiles again.
He doesn't mind being smaller. He doesn't mind that I'm bigger. He isn't just saying that. The way he looks me over, eyes tracing over my legs, my arms, my face. He is happy. He is loved.
It is hard to remember what he looked like before.
Before the light in his eyes. Before he wore reds and blues and elephant shirts I bought him from Cambodia. When he wore black as though he hoped you'd look over him.
Before he was a chance I took. A road that twisted right around so I didn't know if a car would come and take me out. His body was sick. Despair leaked out of him like oil from the exhaust pipe of a beaten up car. I hid him from my family before they tore me away.
He clutched bound pages, a book he had written. He gave that to me. He gave me his soul. He gave his soul to any who glanced his way. He was a paperboy with his soul ripped out and fastened with clips to his newspapers. I read it. It took me a long time. I learnt that this was just the pretty version.
He handed me a leather bound journal covered in scratches. Black inky scratches that made up his past. I read that too. And I read at the end about a little light. A little light he had fallen in love with. Such pain was written in that journal. But that light, he would die for that light. He didn't know he was allowed to have it too.
He used drugs that turned my stomach sour. He leaned on it like an old man on his stick. This man was no Gandalf. He couldn't draw out demons. He fed them with fear and anger and wasted potential. He smoked until his face was blurred.
And then I asked him, "what do you want?"
And his world changed. He didn't know. He didn't know if he dared. If he could touch it. He looked up with a childlike, confused expression on his face. He scrunched up his face that made his glasses leap up higher on his face. Then he took my hand. There was no demand in that moment. He didn't want sworn promises or pledges.
He wanted someone to accept him. To see every side of him and stay.
And I did.
He asked me why. And I gave him my little brown book with shiny white pages. He looked inside and found the light that shone in my eyes. He saw hope and faith and love and sacrifice. And Grace.
He loved and hated it.
Bit by bit his smokey world cleared, black and white landscapes coloured in. Blues and reds and Cambodian t-shirts.
"There." I said, "you have all of me now."
It burned him. But he held on to that little brown book. It healed holes and revealed others. He finally held it over his heart and roared with pain. My little skinny man. He held it tighter and I gripped his wrist.
He may be small.
But he has the heart of kings now.
He handed me back my little brown book and bought his own.
And now?
He has my heart. More than that. He has my soul wrapped up in his little brown book. And I have his.
He has all of me.
We are getting married next summer. Before the author of the little brown book, before the world, we will pledge what sings within us.
For I saw every part of him and loved him still.
He allowed me to lace my fingers into his and show him hope.
I will never forget where he came from. Never forget the pain, the struggle, the hope burning within him as he gripped my hand.
All of him. All of me. All of us.
ns 15.158.61.20da2
