I should be cold but I am as warm as his blood as if it has found space to stream through my density. He clenches me tightly as if he is attempting to break me, as if he belives he could do that very thing with passion alone. But I am as his spirit: too hardened to break. I have seen many things as I lay on the roadside before he found me and for these things I have seen he has come to me, to use me as his last defense, his only hope. He has no one left in the world, and perhaps he clenches me so tightly becuase when I leave his palms that have aged before it was their time, so too will one of his many cares. His calloused hands are emblematic of two hardenings, inside and out. He is but a child, and he should be as smooth as I outwardly, but I fear the things we have witnessed together have left him unsanded; rough without the soothing hands of his mothers which were burried, along with my brother: the clay.

They say it is impossible to draw blood from within me, this is true. The blood lies on my surface but it is not his, it is the blood of all the people this child belives he has let down, his mother, his father… his Ummah. And this is why he throws me. Not to hurt, wound or harm but to save. Save his Ummah from opression and save himself from the guilt that he knows will plague him if he stands by and watch another do harm as I have done, motionless until he found me.

He released me and I too feel I have saved; until the next time when another boy with too many cares warms me, saves me from my idle watching and allows us both, to save.