The pen grip that broke me today

I was watching a kid in the intake room — eight years old, new to the system — fiddling with a pencil like it was a live thing. Not holding it right, not even close. Thumb curled over the top, fingers all wrong. I almost said something, then stopped. That grip? It’s the same one I used when I first started writing my journal after my mom died. The way you hold a pen before you know how to write is how you hold grief before you learn to name it. I didn’t fix his grip. But I kept the pencil. Now it sits on my desk, heavy with silence.