Quarters and Street Corners

My mother taught me to love everyone because everyone needs love.  

         I learned there are scarier things in this life than giving a piece of your time and not getting it back.                

Sirens cross the street everyday and most of us pay no mind to the broken bodies they could be racing to salvage. If you'd spend a day outside Happy Valley you'd feel the loveless lives stuck on street corners and chained to cardboard signs. Beggars reaching for any ounce of the nourishment they've never had. A little farther and you'll find desperates impersonating love with lust, hoping to make ends meet because real love no longer matters when your two year old can't scrape by on food stamps. Tired eyes are looking up to mommy because stomachs are growling and the last meal was taken from a trash can.

There are prisons filled with people who shut their everything to the affection that family and friends and strangers giving quarters tried to deliver. There are hospital beds that mourn for the decrepit trying to grasp a last drop of love from the IV that pumps everywhere but their heart. 

Flowers sell in the stores for above average prices so below average people can tell their special someones they look beautiful in that shirt that brings out their eyes. But do we know how to love with more than just flowers? and chocolates and cards? 

Do we remember what it felt like the first time we were held? How much devotion was brimming from the fingers that cooed with us. Do we care that right now, there is a child who didn't forget these feelings, because they were never his to remember?

Are you aware of the street corners and the prisons Lone Peak has to offer? Have you seen the cardboard signs in the hallway and the trade of lust for approval, for recognition?
There are crying eyes behind the spaces love forgot to seep and everyday our steps make more cracks  we forget to fill. 

My mother taught me to love everyone.

               There are scarier things than giving love to someone who doesn't know to give it back.