(Transcript attached for accompanying video)

It was really more about symbolism than safety.

We lived on the opposite side of the road from our school, and yet each day as we crossed the street I would grab your hand with a grip strong enough to reach you in the afterlife, or at least that’s what I thought.

I held onto you like a link to history that shaped and created an identity that I was still trying to find. Your hand was a portal to a place that I could only visit through weekend stories of a childhood of two languages and one stereotype. Your hardships became a chip on my shoulder of a road that led to a lifetime of questioning whether or not I was going in the right direction. 

Your hand was a safety on a trigger locked on all the wrong decisions. A lighthouse of humility that steered me away from waves of complaints about storms that were nothing more than drizzle, I was never meant to be a captain, but I could be one hell of a first mate.

I could get an assist in every soccer game because I knew you were on the sideline of my life IT WAS NEVER SUPPOSED TO BE THIS WAY. You rode your bicycle every single day, you were a picture of health frozen in time that didn’t fade because faith wouldn’t allow for it. You were timeless, a simultaneous representation of the past and the present in one moment that I will never forget.

A moment that followed me like a shadow I couldn’t see, the palm of my hand became a future that couldn’t be read. It was a future with no history.

And so I allowed ink to seep into my blood and stain my hand with the memory of a walk across the street that was never really necessary.

I just needed a hand.