The Boy in the Red Shirt

He sits alone resting against the blue wall; his gaze falling over the concrete soccer field. Soon he will be a man.

Does he have parents that he knows? Is he a foster child or an orphan? He is one or the other.

Sometimes it is easier to look the other way---to not gaze upon the pain of others, to look away to the blue ocean beyond.

But this is what God brought me to Haiti to see--a boy who sits on a rock wall on a beautiful December day, light falling upon his shoulder.

I want to know him. But I cannot. I want to wrap him in my arms put my head on his chest, whisper up into his ear, “You are loved.”

Too many people pass through his life spending a week mending screens on windows, playing card games, throwing parties. They come and go while he sits under the green canopy on the hill above the blue, blue ocean.

Resignation to the reality of life has set in for the boy in the red shirt.

I walk back up the rocky path. I take my heartache with me. I ask the one who holds me to wrap the boy tightly in Everlasting Arms, to whisper, “You are loved.”

I am and he is.

Loved.


Writing with Lisa-Jo on the Five Minute Friday writing prompt: Ache...