The Letter
Letter to My Younger Self The night I write this, the wind outside my window sounds like a memory, restless, alive, a voice from the past whispering through the cracks. I can almost see him again: the kid I used to be. Baggy pants, flannel open, eyes full of bravado and pain. He thought he was untouchable, thought the block would last forever. We used to post up under flickering streetlights like kings of concrete, young and reckless, ready to die for streets that never wrote back. I wish I could pull him aside, that seventeen-year-old me, before the cops, before the bullets, before the funerals. I’d sit him down somewhere quiet, maybe behind the liquor store where we used to tag the walls, and hand him this letter. --- “Hey Tiny,” You don’t know it yet, but that anger you wear like a jacket isn’t armor, it’s weight. You’re carrying your father’s silence, your mother’s tears, the echoes of every homie who said they’d never leave but did. You think respect comes from fear. You think lov...