The Broken People

I like the broken people best.

I like the ones who watch the world in terror, hear news of climate change or a mass shooting, and watch with a tremble in their lip and tears in their eyes.

I like the ones who cry at movies about animal friends who leave too soon and are enraptured by stories of sacrifice, devotion, and humanity.

I like the ones who look strangers in the eye and see a reflection of themselves. I like those who understand cruelty as a reflection of the perpetrator's pain and look at destruction and rage with pity because they understand the beauty that can be wrought from jubilation and faith.

Broken people understand that forgiveness and kindness are a path to freedom and love is a gift given without expectation of reciprocation.

Fractured people notice the buds of flowers as they erupt from the soil and hear the bird song at dawn. They handle one another with an infinitely delicate touch because they understand that things break and sometimes they can't be repaired; they live in desperate fear of fracturing others because they can taste their own proximity to that edge, feel the unforgiving wind on their cheeks as they peer into that dark abyss.

Broken people peer into that endless night and they choose courage. They face the onslaught of rain, peering hopefully toward the west, holding one another tightly in search of the first rays of dawn and the promise of rebirth.