Grandpapa, his skin of gunmetal gray with a smile of

shining hypnotizing diamonds once said

"little boy give me your hands"

my palms as soft and smooth as a mother's love

would open to the world in naive beauty

his hands became my very bridge I needed

in order to cross this never ending river of white waters

my little popsicle stick of legs would scurry

alongside him, my eyes grasping their adulation

for him, harassing affirmations of old age

slips in, rolls in, dives in

my gunmetal gray grandpapa is dying

I resign, abdicate my role as bodyguard

I bombard my way through the hallways

like a linebacker and like the runners do

at the sound of the blasting gunshot

my tears took off, freefalling from my cheeks

I wanted to scream but there's a C-clamp fastened

around my lips, I can no longer speak

tick tick of a walking stick rovers across my valley

of loneliness and meets me there crying

I see the stick, so I look up to see who controls it

there stands grandpapa smiling diamonds and

for a moment, he stops and rocks side to side

begins to sign and looks at me like a caged dog

breaths in my tears and exhales bombs of fog

as the blankets of murky covers dissipate across

the horizon, he summons a raincloud like you would

a taxi, "little boy give me your hands" he said to me

my palms as rough and eroded like the side of a cliff wall

being mercilessly beaten by the bobbing waters

opened up to the world in complete mutiny

" see this cloud that stands before us,

I use to not care for it much

I use to stand guard at the watchtower and as

these clouds danced their war dances upon me

I unleashed fireballs of denial and self hate only found

in bottles, they fondled the disillusioned sky of mine

and those battles I won

But one day, this raincloud the size bigger than anything

I've ever known ran a blitzkrieg on the front

my fireballs, pellet balls, now spitballs impacted the cloud

like a silent orator

my weapons, their inept ability to protect me, forsake me

and with that, I surrendered, no choice but to walk in

little boy I’m telling you to walk in and to not fear

the inevitable, inequitable trials of life

I want you to carry this seed to accompany you along

your journey and to plant it when you see me again"

"But!" I said and before I could finish he vanished

leaving me with the task of dancing through the rain cloud

dancing through the anguished filled tears of past sorrows

proved to be difficult to me

the pools filled and made the cloud heavy

I danced through puddles left by the plights

of slave dreams, indian trail paths, a dead son left

by a forgettable war, and much more

the cloud at its carrying capacity, released me

along with its tears, I found myself, seed in hand

grandpapa in sight

upon his orders I delivered the seed into the womb

of the soil resting beside his grave

The tears of the past makes it possible for me to see

the beauty that grows in front of me

and there stood a glimmering red rose, ready to be inspected

it stood right next to my grandpapa's headstone as it lured

me closer, I noticed a note that read

"All of the misery life seems to dish out at us

can all be summed up, it's all too common to whine

and to avoid rainclouds barreling towards us

life, a thorn filled stem, waits to be plucked

don't let the thorns deter you from the beauty that

the thorny stem leads up to... a full blossom of

red rose awesomeness. With love, Grandpapa"

I picked up the rose, the bloody hurt hands I now have

is a small price to pay, rose in hand, I trekked back home

with a new perspective on life.