I am told there was a boy.
I don't know for sure, but his shoes were brown and dusty. They were laced up tightly with dry rotted laces. At any moment, the boy might experience a dusty explosion on his foot.
He was too young to figure out a way to fix a broken lace.
He would find a way to fix it, easily. He would always fix things that were broken.
"The fixer of broken things" would be the first level of his personal totem. The man he would become.
He would sit outside his sister's door to make sure no men tried to bother her. He couldn't make the men go away completely, but he could stand guard. It worked. He did what he could. The little boy, with the grown up haircut, would wait for the men to come and hold up a mirror. He would show them, with a solemn look, who they were.
"The guardian of precious things" would be the next level.
... or maybe "the worrier".
Who is this boy? The one with the adult's face. The child's smile.
This boy is gone.
Since the world had no soft places for him to land when he fell, he turned to wood. A soft wood that molds and is redefined every season.
I piece of wood with spirituality... with feathers and smoke.
The boy turned into a prayer pipe.
A store front chief with more stories than he'll ever tell.
