Prompt: Let your heart stay shattered in your chest (from Kintsugi Again by James Crews)

I sat in my own bubble as I waited for my delayed flight to hopefully start boarding soon. 

I hear to my right a muffled exchange of a tween boy being dropped off and the flight attendant assuring she would help him fly home alone safely. 

After awhile, having all my stuff around me, I didn’t want to haul all my shit to the bathroom, so I ask the tween two seats away from me “hey love, do you mind?….” before finishing my sentence I see him turn to me, well over twenty minutes after he was dropped off, with fat tears brimming at his eyelids. 

“Hey love - oh what’s wrong?” I ask 

He says “I miss my uncle” and starts sobbing. 

I ask him if he wants to sit next to me. He says yes. He slides over. I ask him if I can put my arm around him, he says yes. I drape my arm around him as if he were my own. 

I ask him what his uncle means to him. He tells me he’s like his dad to him. He tells me he is going home to San Jose to his mom and grandma, but his dad is in prison for being a pedophile. He shares all of this without being able to pronounce his “r’s” and holding a stuffed animal in his arms. 

I ask him what him and his uncle did together. He told me about the ghost town they visited and how he saw a donkey ghost and a man ghost and they were green looking and he didn’t get a picture because he was so scared. 

I tell him what a beautiful memory they got to make together. I tell him how when we miss someone, when it aches like that, it shows just how important those people are to us. 

He tells me he’s excited for school but gets bullied by some kids. I ask him if he knows what it means when kids bully, he says it’s because something is happening at home. I tell him he is wise for 13. 

He offers me some of his pizza. I give him my mints. He tells me thank you. I tell him thank you. He hugs me around my neck and I realize I’m about to miss my flight now. 

I leave him with tears dried from his eyes, mine pouring like a faucet, letting my heart shatter in my chest in the most beautiful, terrible way.