Long Way Down

by Jason Reynolds

but if the blood inside you is on the inside of someone else, you never want to see it on the outside of them.

But the worst part, the absolute worst part, is the constant slipping of your tongue into the new empty space, where you know a tooth supposed to be but ain’t no more.

I’VE NEVER BEEN in an earthquake. Don’t know if this was even close to how they are, but the ground defi nitely felt like it o pened up and ate me.

People always love people more when they’re dead.

Smoke like spirit can be thick but ain’t supposed to be nothing solid enough to hold me.

How do you tell water ain’t nothing funny about drowning?

UNCLE MARK PULLED ME IN for a hug, but how you hug what’s haunting you?

AND YOU KNOW it’s weird to know a person you don’t know and at the same time not know a person you know, you know?

WHAT YOU MEAN? I asked, trying to avoid having to talk about the coldness in my heart

Past present future forever.

Maybe not as happy. But definitely better.

guess, people— in the elevator, smoking. I know it don’t make sense, but stay with me.

IS IT POSSIBLE for a hug to peel back skin of time, the toughened and raw bits, the irritated and irritating dry spots, the parts that bleed?

A BROKEN HEART killed my dad. That’s what my mother always said. And as a kid I always figured his heart was forreal broken like an arm or a toy or the middle drawer.

HOW YOU BEEN? Weird talking to my dad like he was a stranger even though we hugged like family.

How do you small-talk your father when “dad” is a language so foreign that whenever you try to say it, it feels like you got a third lip and a second tongue?

Sadness and love in his voice. I replied, choking down me choking up, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know what to do.

LEANED against the wall next to Dani, thinking, staring at my father who wasn’t my father at all. At least not like I had imagined him. A man who moved with precision, patience, purpose, not no willy-nilly

Maybe that I was exactly how he had imagined. Maybe that disappointed him.

Again, dove into each other. This time the hug, a mix of I miss you and who are you and I’m confused and I’m cracking and I don’t know what the hell to do or where the hell to go.

to get lost in the new and strangely familiar feeling

CONFESSED that I was scared, that I needed to know I was doing the right thing.

I WAS BREAKING DOWN. The tears were coming and I did what I could to hold them back.