This kinda love.

ain’t made for everyone. Type to give ya Goosebumps, cure the hickups, lower fevers, raise standards. You were a big hug on a bad day, how you provided strong lungs for an asthmatic, taught a dyslexic to write abstract, show an infant with speech impediments he could give speeches at college commencements, is unprecedented. How you worked 2 full times but still made time on week days to attend soccer practice, showed me as a pipsqueak the gigantic heights that love could reach.

No, this kinda love ain’t made for everyone. When I cried on holidays about missing parents you never told me to whipe away those tears. You made me channel them. I might have felt periods of abandonment, but I never felt inadequate. I was special, or so you reiterated, so I couldn’t ignore it. Used to suffer from night terrors before you took full custody. A love like this had to be made of concrete because when you rocked me I just felt so safe at night. My dream catcher.

Yea, this kinda love ain’t made for everyone. When I used to be insecure about smiling because I had buck teeth you didn’t hesitate to put my butt in braces. And on those days I didn’t wanna crack a smile you made you laugh. When acne made those prom pictures hard to face you had no problem cooking up home remedies that made it easier to look at the mirror. I might of been picked on in grade school or picked last at recess, and even when I picked at myself you could pick up all the stuffing and put me back together.

See this kinda love ain’t made for everyone. You unbandaged those scars I tried to hide from the world. Filled my spirit when the emptiness to my rabbit hole had no floor. Had the sins of my father & my mother’s insecurities. So when I couldn’t stand myself you taught me how to kneel. Can’t tell you how many evenings the chapter colossians kept me off the streets. But I can tell you how many times I prayed for strength and you would cover me like banners hanging in the rafters. But I could do anything. You said that. And you meant that. I thank you. I don’t know where I’d really be without that.

Your love wasn’t made for everyone. So I made sure to reward you with the highest form of flattery-imitation. When doctors diagnosed you with months to live. We watched decades fly by. Toasted every New Years Eve with cider till I was of age for champagne, wheeled you around like you were on a stroller again on that Las Vegas Strip was Celine Dion was on tour, rocked you to sleep during those cold dialysis treatments, caught every one of those warm tears on my cheek when cancer took your breast, tatted your wings on my chest when gangrene snatched your feet, & in spite of it all we claimed victory before we ever considered calling it quits.

Our kinda can’t be made for everyone. Cause the older I’ve gotten the more I’ve realized how I’m not for everyone. I love too abundantly. Take things too personally. I speak too candidly. I live too openly. And my generation doesn’t know how to. I don’t know how to hold back, have a hard time fitting in, struggle with keeping it to myself, refuse to walk away. Met a lot of people who don’t have the conditioning to love intensely, from personal to universal, but most of all unconditionally.

I wish I could tell you things haven’t changed since you’ve been gone. But you are still the voice I carry. Your likeliness will be in the woman I marry. And every hummingbird I see reminds me you’re still keeping an eye on me. I intend on loving you as much as I did in pampers until the day I’m in dentures. So every birthday of yours that passes, do you think I could ever not add another love letter to your collection? Still as much involved in my life in the after life as you were after school. And that is 1 thing that will never change…This kinda love isn’t made for everyone. Cause everyone doesn’t believe in miracles.