inherited sadness

when i met your cousin, she told me that sadness had been running through your family for generations, and that it had shaped you into the tough, guarded person you are today. she then began telling me the stories from your past, the ones that had stayed hidden in the dark for years. she told them carefully, one by one, with so much detail that i started to see parts of you i had never known how to ask about.

and after everything that had happened to you, after all the things that had taught you to be hard, you still somehow had a heart soft enough to love me.

i remember that night on the balcony so clearly. we smoked, ate snacks, drank milk tea, and talked while the city stretched out beneath us, all those skyscrapers still lit up in the distance.

at some point, you started teaching me everything life had taught you.

• how to break someone's arm
• how to survive in places that were harsh and unforgiving
• how to stay alive when things went wrong
• the formulas used to calculate our next move in life

you had spent your whole life learning how not to be destroyed by the world, and that night, without ever saying it, you were trying to make sure the world would not destroy me either.