Between Bruises and Blooms

There is a photograph I return to more often than I should.

A boy standing in England,

smiling at a pelican like he’d stumbled into a storybook.

I wonder if you knew that somewhere across an ocean,

a girl was waiting for your voice to tell her it was finally safe to sleep.

You were discovering new countries.

I was discovering how long a night could really be.

You collected passport stamps.

I collected the minutes until your Skype call.

Funny, the things a photograph can’t show.

It can’t show the six-hour time difference.

Or the nights you stayed awake until my breathing slowed.

It can’t show how your voice became the first place I ever felt completely safe.

People will look at that picture and see a young man petting a pelican.

I’ll always see the boy who crossed an ocean without ever realizing

he’d already traveled so much farther than that.

Because kindness has a way of reaching places

planes never can.