Don’t read these words like you actually know me. No. Pretend I’m a stranger. Make believe these are pages you found bound together on the street. Please. I am lowkey begging you. Give me that grace. I’m asking for it, even though I know it can’t be given. An impossibility. Grace just is. By no work or deed of your own. The hated are loved. The weight of full hearts breaks others.

I just want to write my way from beginning to end, birth to death. Things I can own and those stubbed toes and stumbled steps I might in the long run rather omit. I am going to write it down. For myself. For you. Though I recognize you didn’t ask me to do it. For my son. For Ashley. For the kids two thousand years from now, for when they fight through the fray. When they ask, I don’t need to articulate what. Just, when they ask.

Is why I write.