Be True

I was having a bad day, little sweetheart. I made myself go for a walk all the way up the Met but I couldn't even enjoy it. I barely experienced it. It just made me feel even worse and more lonely. And I was almost back home, thinking how I just don't know what to do, when I saw two women with carry-on luggage, the kind with rollers, talking to two girls on the sidewalk on 10th Avenue. Like behind Lincoln Center. Not anywhere you'd be with luggage. They looked lost. So, I asked if I could help. They wanted to be at Columbus Circle they said. So, I told them they needed to go south and east. Then they showed me a crumpled piece of paper that had their hotel reservation on it. They needed to be on W63rd st. No wonder they were lost - there is no W63rd Street once you get that far west because Lincoln Center takes up about four of those blocks. I told them all that and that they just needed to go up two more blocks to W65th, make a right and then another right on Broadway to find W63th Street. I also told them once they did get checked-in, that Lincoln Center was a great place to go. I was kind of pointing through all this, giving them directions, and the other two girls, who had on some kind of name tags like they worked for a ministry or something noticed the tattoo on my arm, little sweetheart, and they asked me what it said. And I told them about you, and about the dream and everything. They got very quiet and kind. I didn't mean to make them sad. Indeed, I was glad they asked. I love talking about you. I brightened and then I said “God bless you. All of you.” And I told them to have fun in New York. Just moments earlier I was thinking that there is nothing left of my life that I want. Nothing to do, nowhere to go. That when I even try, it just makes me so sad I want to die. And I do, I do just want to pass from this life and fly to be with you wherever you are. But in these moments, when I help someone, when someone asks me something that leads me to tell them of you, I feel better. And I know that what’s left to do is just to be true, be true to you. Carry on the work. Say quiet prayers. Try to help people when I can. Be true. That phrase just seems so resonant, so important. I wrote it down last night and it’s sitting here on my desk as I write this. Life can never be what it was. How could it? It’s a smaller thing now. I need to respect that. Need to quiet myself. And be true.