Hand Me Downs ve ) By Sarah Kay \ a I know you've taken fo wearing around your father’s hand-me-down anger. But I wish that you wouldn't. It’s a few sizes too big and everyone can sae it doesn't fit you, makes you look silly, hangs loose at all the wrong places, even if it does match your skin color. | know you think you'll grow into it, that your arms will beef up after all the fighting and it will sit on your shoulders if only you pin it on the right places with well-placed conviction. ‘The bathroom mirror tells you you look good in it, that it makes your fists look a lot more justified, when you dig your hands deep into the pockets you'l find stories hidden he loft there for you to hand out to the other boys like gat bombs. {And on days when everything else is sipping through your fingers, this you can wrap yourself inside of, this will keep you warm at night, help you drift off to sleep with a certainty that no matter what, it will still be there when you wake up. And the longer you wear it, the better it starts to fit, until some of the stories are your own, Maybe the holes in the sleeve are from the bullets you dodged yourself, so when if rips, snags.on.a barbed wire fence or someone else's family, don't worry. ‘Cause your mother and your sister will help mend it-patch the holes, sew the tears, replace a button or two, help you back into it and tell you how proud they are of you, how good it looks on you the same way it looked on your dad, and your granddad too, and on his dad before him and on is father before him. But back then, back then there was only sand until.someane drew.a line,.someone built a wall, someone threw a stone, And the crack in the skull that it hit fractured perfectly outward, like twigs on the branches on the limbs of a family tree. So someone threw a stone back, and each fracture, each tiny break wound itself together into thread and the thread pulled.tsel-around-him- your great-great-great-great somebody. ‘And on the other side of that wall they were knitting just as fast, and their’ fit them just as well but only slightly different shade. So I'm asking, when the time comes, who's gonna be the first one to put down the needle and thread? Who's gonna be the first one to remember that their grandpa suffered just as many broken windows, broken hearts, broken bones, and the first time you come down to dinner and your son is sitting at the dining room table with your hatred on his shoulders, who's gonna be the first one to tell him it's Toa rt ae Bia 1 rolling oot OUD a TOY in HE Bath Of with doh TIS 1S Ain ac. od NE ATS GOEL oneh 1S soy id, a St NIM, SHES SayING not mouse her dog AHron ee mest, Fit ue nee ou Fe RU’ toainee Je FNC) te iH MIS grandpa ad” we Gant aoe a yacones fa Ba tain Se Stop WecaoTe WB REE 7 sabato n 0 Do 2 iS oO fur che > tS Nok The lees HIN Ts ert ange TEER difeere ecasse she WOs nAvda Mer Per east E vraugn yy aloaot hin look feud ek” shee ie leant, 70 Mreepantler Ving The ee ‘ ty childbwed and. No eee ee 7 ee ee ngs dS grow. UPS. 1 VES SO) TOW. MIwhat TE thin is + 2 true ani Sat all Pe Olea TANS 3S LING ¢ ML AW _ OW OPANGN TAS a5 a heya boat aot +tous saap tak Sore 6 ‘eeirng, ' 4 < Sou , You Godt ae +O 39 wisot your