to you,

I had a lecture today.

It's not really news—I have lectures every day. I'm a college student. It's something we do.

But today... it was different.

It's a history credit I'm taking, you know, one of the ones that's required no matter what major you land yourself in, so it wasn't odd to see a quarter of the class on their phones and another quarter doodling in their notebooks. But the professor's alright. We laugh at his jokes and he smiles when he teaches, and even if this is only his second year teaching I think he's doing a great job.

This lecture was about the AIDS crisis in the US; a period from around 1981 to 1997.

Not much of it was something none of us hadn't heard before, so I had my ears to his teaching but my eyes on my phone, fiddling around with solitaire like I had been the past few weeks. 

Then, the professor started reading Untitled (One Day This Kid...) by David Wojnarowicz.

Then, something changed. 

He made it through the beginning, then to the middle. 

He started off the end with something like: "This last part I think is really powerful..."

And he stopped.

He stared down at the piece on the desk in silence. People started murmuring. I looked up from my phone.

Sometimes there were things that just hit you when you're not expecting it. Like a punch to the gut or a shot through the heart, and it happened when he finally opened his mouth and apologized in that broken, wrecked voice as tears clogged his throat.

"I'm sorry. I can't... I can't read it."

And the entire lecture hall went silent.

It felt like no one was breathing. It felt like I wasn't breathing. Standing behind that desk with over a hundred pairs of eyes looking down stood a man I never thought of outside of class or discussions or essays, his eyes red as he tried to wipe them and stop them from leaking. He smiled, then, and laughed a little awkwardly as he sniffed.

"That's weird," he'd said. "I've never cried during lecture before."

Soft, scattered chuckles echoed in the hall, but it was still quick to quiet. 

But then he built his resolve. "No, no, I'll read it. I'll read it."

The last sentence of that work is twenty-eight words long.

It took less than a minute to read. There were no big words, no grand gesture, no mind-blowing idea to send the readers off screaming. 

The professor spoke those twenty-eight words with wet cheeks and strained syllables, and he couldn't stop crying.

It was one of the hardest twenty-eight words I'd ever had to sit through.

I left lecture with glassy eyes and a memory I don't think I would forget for a long, long time.

So why am I writing this letter out to you, telling you about my day? I don't know. I haven't written you to in a while. Maybe this was something you needed to hear. What for, I couldn't tell you, but I can tell you this—

I have twenty-eight words for you, too.

One day, this kid will grow up. She'd learn about love with conditions, hate without reason, a shoulder too cold.

But this kid was never yours to break.

from,

me

p.s. The professor's twenty-eight words left him in tears.

p.p.s. My twenty-eight words left me nothing.