A Love Story
This is a story of love.
It began with pain; a bruise on the leg of a beggar child after he was kicked by a passing student.
It was breathed into being by grubby hand prints, and hungry faces. It was nurtured by a single persistent request for money and confusion in watery child eyes when people ran away from her filthy presence. It was birthed when the children revealed their names, their family, their simply childishness, their desire for some milk more than money.
This love story grew up in poverty and grime. It dragged cardboard boxes around in the streets and didn't wear socks and one time lost all of their shoes in the stinking ditch near the school gate. It broke their skin, cracked their noses, chapped their faces, tore their fingers, and one time left open pussy wounds all over the face of the smallest one. This love story only grew stronger and went out looking for the children to clean them, washing their faces and skinny arms up to their shoulders, and nurse them back to relative health.
It grew, not in time, but rather in packages of chicken which were bought consistently every time the children appeared. The love story started to include not just the beggars but the shopkeepers, students, and even people in another hemisphere. It matured until the beggars became claimed and watched for and packages were sent on their behalf and a grand plan to celebrate this love story was hatched and they asked students and learned the name of the pale one they used to believe was called 'Hello'.
Ms. Killy, when will you go to your hometown? they asked one day in a surprising change from their normal question which was can we buy something to eat?
And then they disappeared. For more than a week there were no children.
This story of love became a story of agony as a book bag, bought by a friend who heard the story and became part of it, filled with stuffed animals, coloring, books, and socks from America, as well as toothbrushes, snacks, tissues from here, sat getting dusty in a quickly emptying apartment. The police are collecting the beggars and sending them away this month, another friend sadly considered and the love story became frantic.
Love reaches entirely new levels when it can do nothing more than return to the source of its perfection.
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A phone call: Ms. Kelly, the beggars are here! They came back! They are at the school gate! I will tell them to wait for you!
A teacher and three students quickly finished lunch, dashed to the school gate, scooped up the two smallest beggars as the oldest road a rusty bike that was at least ten sizes too large for him behind them.
A book bag bulging with things was ushered down from an apartment to a quiet place in the shade behind the building, right into the arms of the slightly confused, though happy, children.
A threesome of students unzipped the bag which the children didn't know what to do with and started to unload its contents on the grass for the wide-eyed, silent, dusty children to observe.
A tear, then two, then many ran down the faces of the students as they saw all that had been given. The children tilted their heads in disbelief until a stuffed monkey was drawn from the bag and the smallest one started giggling.
A love story was celebrated by three little ones, the very picture of every poor little one that the Son of perfect Love loves, shuffled down a broken, dirty sidewalk balancing a too large bike between them carrying a book bag filled with more than they had ever owned.
Ms. Kelly, today I am very moved. I know you really love those beggars. I... I want to be like you... I think you are like god declared one, rather choked up, student.
Now I will tell you which god I'm like...
And a new love story flinched with its first signs of life.
