Little sparks can set off a huge fire. It takes the smallest stimuli to see the most heat giving flames. This time I leant over the counter as I was about to pay for a few items I’d just gathered. The day’s great worries and stresses just seem to come out, when I put my hands down spread apart then let out a huge sigh. Closing my eyes I was immediately transported to the steel railings of the compound where I worked all too hard for Ty’s acceptance and leniency.

Opening my eyes I was still there, just felt embarrassed when the cashier looked at me with another blank stare. It was too a small reminder that everyone had something to deal with. There was too a sigh of relief that he breaths out that opens a door way to a memory. But that moment was over now and started feeling my chest cave in on itself. It was not the blank stare, nor was it the ice cold counter that made me feel this way, but I did feel it. Again my breathing was getting shallow. The car door swung open and I was driving now, staring at the darkness of the road a head of me. The road doesn’t care how I felt, the cashier wouldn’t care no one else even knew me to have the ability to care. Truly, that was how it seemed. I reflected on the day and it came back to me, when she turned her back on me perhaps it meant something more. The comment that he didn’t make put me on edge and it all came back in a second and the music that was playing in my car conveniently came to a crescendo.

A small out break of what I was feeling managed to slip out. The day’s little signs may have all been pointing to what I am doing wrong. My phone rang, I picked it up, it was Juan, “Not again”, I whispered to myself. I can’t seem to muster enough for him too. The day seemed to have gone off sm$oothly and I really don’t want to mess it up. In a split second I could see his warm smile in my mind, and it was like a band of light just hit me and I remembered my reality. The day was bad but Juan never expected me to cover up my feelings. He might’ve had a good day, He always seemed to remember his days with genuine joy. I wanted that part of his joy, to share in it. One day I too hoped to bring that same joy to him. It was the strange ability to remember the bad, with an inner joy. And there it was, a memory that gave me hope.