Childish Cycles

I am 19 years old.

There is a child. He likes me for some reason, has joy in his voice when he says my name, leaving out the Mr. he’s supposed to put in front of it. I’ll never tell him that though. There’s something in him though, a desperate crawling empty need. Something he clutches at me to ease or fill, but I can’t not in the one year I get to be there for him. I can cover it for a second, let him sit in my lap, hold my hand, use my coat as a hat. But it’s there, always. Sometimes it comes out in full force, he stands still staring at something, the radiator in the hallway is a common choice, or he’ll walk out of the school, kicking a snow bank and looking at the wall. I’ll crouch next to him, try to tell him that he has to go inside, go to class, learn, grow, get ready for me to abandon him. But it isn’t enough I can’t join him in that empty need that he sits in, all I can do is be with him, be there for him, ready to lift him out, let him know that I’ll always be there for him. But I won’t be. I’ll be gone in a year, and I can’t explain to him the reasons why, not in a way he’ll understand. He’ll just know that I’m gone and that there is a new batch of tall people in red jackets that think they can save him, that think he’s adorable and cute. That’ll laugh when he takes there stuff, when he thinks they will do anything he asks, because for one year they will. We will dig our way into his life, drag up the joy make him love and need us and then leave him. And then when the years of losses have beaten him down and he’s old enough to no longer be cute when he fails to respect us, we’ll try to dig past the walls to the child inside and maybe we'll succeed, and give him another year of love, before another batch leaves him.

But here I am for this year, and I’ll keep going, held together by some vain hope and little moments that keep the broken pieces from crumbling. Seeing him show his stuffed animal to another student, both of them smiling, him running by not noticing me in his joyful game, or seeing him watch his father picking away at a guitar as he puts on his backpack to go home. And sometimes that is enough for me to keep going until I can escape, let go of his pain in the way he can't, and be put back together by time in the way that he'll be beaten down.