I met a little Black boy
standing at the edge of himself,
barefoot on memory,
wrapped in a silence too loud to ignore.

He didn’t speak.
He scanned the room for exits,
for falsehood,
for hands that meant harm disguised as help.

He didn’t trust my softness.
He squinted at my smile,
like it was sunlight
too warm to believe in
after winters he never chose.

I told him,
“You don’t have to run.”
He flinched anyway.
I understood.
Sometimes survival means flinching
before the fall.

He stayed though.
Tested me like a mirror
tilted, cracked,
asking,
“Will you still see me whole?”

He threw tantrums made of shadows,
language that never left his lips
but screamed in the spaces between.

I set the boundary:
“It’s okay to be loud,
but not to bruise.”

And he blinked.
Like no one ever said that before.

Each day,
he sat a little closer.

Asked questions with his eyes
I couldn’t quite answer with words
but I didn’t look away.

He softened.
Not in weakness,
but in weight.
Like someone finally let him put it down.

And one day,
just as the sun caught the window,
he whispered…
not in words,
but in presence

“I’m him.”

The man you see
with the voice deep as regret
and the laugh that skips beats

He’s me.

I’ve been here all along,
small, waiting to be seen.

His inner child had met mine.
Not on purpose,
but in the pause between pretending.

His little Black boy
met my little Black girl,
and they didn’t play house.
They built a home.

Because while
hurt people hurt people,
and healed people heal people

sometimes,
it takes one whole soul
to sit with the shattered
and say,
“I see you anyway.”