The tape had no label. Just a plain white shell, tucked in a shoebox of old mix tapes from high school.
I almost threw it away. But something made me dig out the old boombox from the garage.
I pressed play and heard a voice I hadn't thought about in twenty years—the youth pastor at the church my mother dragged me to.
He was telling a room full of kids that they were going to be okay. That God saw them even when no one else did.
I sat on the floor of my empty apartment, phone charger wedged at that one angle so it would keep charging, and I cried.
That tape wasn't his—it was mine. He must have taped it for me before we got married, and I never knew.
The quietest battles are the ones fought in the moments we think nobody's looking. But sometimes a voice from the past breaks through.
The tape ended and the deck clicked off. I rewound it and played it again.