PART 3   I stared at the hospital bracelet in the lunchbox until the letters of my own name blurred.

hate him and become hard.

I was afraid relatives would turn his pain into gossip.

And maybe, most of all, I was afraid you would look at me differently for still caring about a man the world had thrown away.

I cried then.

Not the graceful kind.

The kind that bends your face into something you would never show a camera.

Because I finally understood the shape continue reading …