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 my first foster kid had. The one who ran away after three weeks because he said the house felt too loud. He didn’t know how to hold a pen without thinking about it. I still have his notebook somewhere. Pages full of looping scribbles, like he was trying to write himself out of the room. Today, I just watched. Didn’t fi