Patron Saints of Nothing

by Randy Ribay

“Listen,” Mom said in that moment, hugging me closer. So I did. Baby birds chirped just outside the window. “One thing dies, and another is born. Maybe the puppy’s soul now has wings.”

We can only handle so much truth at any given moment, I suppose. So instead, I said nothing.

“It’s easy to romanticize a place when it’s far away,”

“But as many good things as there are, there are many bad things, things not so easy to see from far away. When you are close, though, they are sometimes all you see.”

But, it seems to me that there are so many older than us who are able to take care of those in need. If everyone did a little bit, then everybody would be okay, I think. Instead, most people do nothing. And that is the problem.

Then you grow up a bit more and they tell you the lie that life is as simple as studying hard, getting into a good college, and finding a decent job. Sometimes I feel like growing up is slowly peeling back these layers of lies.

“Maybe you haven’t developed a passion yet because you’ve spent your entire life doing what others wanted you to do.”

Surely the air your lungs first breathe matters. The language your ears first hear. The foods your nose first smells and your tongue first tastes. The soil you first crawl upon. My conscious brain might not remember, but something in me does.

Fuck anyone who tries to tell you who you are and where you belong.

I think about how there’s a new grief in remembering Jun now, knowing what eventually happened, knowing that he was more than my idea of him in ways I do not like, knowing that there’s probably so much more I’ll never know.

“He was human,” she says without hesitation. “He was struggling. Just because he was a user, a pusher, it doesn’t mean that his life was worthless. It doesn’t mean that there wasn’t good in him.”

“He said that those suffering from addiction needed to be helped, not to be arrested, because their addiction was as much genetics as it was a choice. And that those pushing needed to be employed, not to be killed, because most of them were only trying to survive. He also said that none of these drugs could even make their way into our country to begin with if not for corrupt people in power—so they needed to be replaced, not reelected.”

Truly, none of us is one thing.