Small Joys

by Elvin James Mensah

familial heartbreak really was different, I’d realized. It was nothing like I imagined the romantic kind was, where it was the vulnerability that did you in, that made you susceptible to emotional terrorism. You didn’t have to be vulnerable for familial pain to ruin you; its power to do so transcended walls you’d built, or the emotional distance you’d put forth because you’d begun to suspect that sometimes love wasn’t all that unconditional.