To The Child Sleeping On The Bus,

You will grow up and do unspeakable things, will perpetrate countless tiny acts of evil on your fellow humans being, and you will become an adult and develop callouses on the soles of your feet because the path to the grave gets increasingly rocky and jagged the farther one walks toward its terminus some ways away beyond the horizon.

We all do these things. I walk that path too.

The world shrinks as you get older. The horizon grows nearer, and begins to resemble a hill crest toward the end, before becoming a precipice. And when you stand there, toes curled over the edge, waiting for a breeze or sudden muscle spasm to hurl you into the maw of eternal stasis, if you can look backward for a second and survey the ground you covered and then marvel at that winding trail, you’ll fall forever knowing that you did something worthy of being called “good”.

But for now, sleep well, and know that the women on the bus are clucking approvingly amongst themselves about your father, whose leg is your too-firm pillow.


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