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Context: This was a letter written to Frank who is a character in the book If Beale Street Could Talk. 

Dear Frank,
Your head is muddled with thoughts of your own son.
Your only son.
Incarcerated.

Life for you is like a tug of war.
An emotional war
between you and your racist opponents.
You try to firmly grip the rope,
having the confidence to free Fonny.
But the rope slowly trickles from you to the other side
and brings you sliding to the racist end.
Fonny doesn’t seem to understand how to help you.
Neither do you.

Is that why you left him?

The laughter you had with Joe,
the arguments you had with Mrs. Hunt,
the bond you had with Tish
all come to mind when I think of you.

Your bravery.
Your determination
to stand for the family
as a black man living in an unjust society.

But you left them.

The glistening, brown eyes you had.
Those eyes gave a spark of light,
a spark of light to see our ways
in the vast drowned space
of injustice.

And then you blew it,
just like a birthday candle
that I once blew out on my 1st birthday
marking the day I was born.
It was birthdays that made me joyful.
Joyful to spend my life to the fullest.
Do you remember the time Fonny turned one?
Do you remember how happy you and Fonny were together?
Do you remember his little smile filled with joy,
his soft voice that brought you cheer,
his kisses that pressed against your cheek?
You stripped yourself of the chance to experience this with Fonny’s son.

But never did I know
you struggle.
Struggle to bypass the road of hate.

Then I saw tears.
Tears running down your face in streams.
Streams that are searching to find an answer to a problem.
Each tear is covered in a delicate layer of words,
harsh words describing you,
hurting you,
but no one will ever know.

I understand your struggle.
I saw the pain through your smile.

As a matter of fact I struggled too.
Struggled with things that are out of my control.
With things that knot around me and tear me apart.
It is not my fault that I have to live in a society with struggles tangling within me.
I struggle just like you.
Each and everyday.

You chose the easy way out.
But I chose to stay and work through my struggles.
To improve life when things get hard.
To make myself happy
To laugh at times when there was no reason to do so.
To be there for my family
because I knew that I was the strength for my family to keep going.
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