I’ve felt you in the back of my mind, little man, since I began thinking about this. About having the chance to talk to you.
I’ve imagined the way you imagine when you’re not imagining at all, but just rewriting stories others have handed to you, filling in their blanks with your own haphazard pencil scrawl. You already know that feeling.
I imagined if I was given the chance to speak across time, for my voice to vibrate the bitter air on a Tuesday morning in November 1992, that I might find you waiting on a bus in the cold of the holler. I imagine I try to warn you just how much you’re going to suffer in your little blue turtleneck and the little brown bear mom bought you because she knew you would need comfort once the world out there heard you speak or saw you move or knew you would become the words they used to insult you. That I might warn you about the horrible things they would do to you.
But even if these violent things come to pass—and they will—this is not your story.
It is theirs.
And even there, waiting on the bus for 3rd grade, you are tired of being handed stories.
Forgive me. And take this pen, little man.
I want to say don’t be upset that I am crying while I talk to you. But I know you won’t be. You’ve never feared emotions. And look—I am already doing it again. Writing you into things.
Here’s the pen. Hold it. It’s yours.
I am not here to warn you.
I am here to thank you. To praise you. You, the storyteller. You, the dreamer. You, the unstoppable force who took twenty-six letters and carved a life from time and space, no less a miner than your coalminer forefathers, but you, little man, will keep the coal for yourself.
You will burn it. Will keep yourself and others warm. Will hurl it when you have to.
You will have to.
Take this pen, little man.
Do what you were going to do whether I came or not. Write your story. Make it big. As big as you. Make it unafraid. As unafraid as you. Give it every hope they would shape away. Give it wings and let it breathe fire. Thick lava fire. Dance with it. Laugh with it. All the silly jokes that you like. Hug those jokes so hard. Give them a name and a shape. Step into them like a suit.
Thank you for your stories. For those suits.
The life you write for me is good. You used colors that didn’t exist before you.
Go tell Mrs. Minor in art class that there are colors yet to be invented. You become people who never existed too.
Go tell Mrs. Damron in social studies. She will believe you. You don’t just see the future, little man. You write it. You make it happen.
Go tell the preacher that. It won’t matter if he believes you or not. He can’t use a pen like you.
I won’t tell you anything else. You don’t need it. You’ve seen Back to the Future like a million times anyway. You know it would only cause problems.
And besides. I don’t want to spoil the story you’ve dreamed up. I just want to tell you that it was all you. All of it. Every cup of coffee. Every beautiful thing. Every morning when I feel loved. Every nap in the afternoon. Every whiff of tree and leaves on the autumn breeze. It is all so beautiful that I wake up every day excited to live it—because you were so smart, so strong, so brave.
Mostly, I want to thank you for holding onto this pen all this time. I know how easily you lose things. But I still have it, right here, deep in my heart, writing stories so far down inside of us they can’t take them away.
Be thinking for me, okay? I need someone courageous like you. Hopeful like you. So full of love like you. Let’s make this story have the best ending ever.
Together.
