DESCRIPTION
This short letter is for Abbie Angel, the teenager that I met two weeks ago in Toledo, Ohio at Ed Cullen Park. Abbie, I saw you in Stormania--can it really be you? [720 words]
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
I've written a few inspirational books and cookbooks, but was surprised to see this sad-looking teen at the park. I'd seen this website in her poetry book. Abbie, I hope you're the same little girl! [July 2004]
Tribute To Abbie Angel Allington Kinsley
She calls herself Abbie Angel. I don’t know her real name; all that I know about her is that she is a runaway girl and I saw her one day in the park, crying over a poem she was writing.
To most of us, Abbie is merely an unpleasant statistic of society. Underneath the fear, the loneliness and the mistrust, Abbie is a beautiful, intelligent and sparkling little girl. She could be mine; she could be yours; but she belongs to the streets now.
She is a face among the faceless; a solitary tear from the cries that go unheard in the middle of the night.
Abbie came to me because we shared a kinship through our writing, I suppose, and because she spotted the crutches leaning against my bench and my wrapped ankle.
You would not approach Abbie, for she would simply vanish. Abbie is a shadow; a reflection in a window that you see and turn around, only to find that you are alone. She is completely feral, a discarded orphan of an unwanted home. Abbie will never know the warmth of a mother’s heart or feel the love in a father’s dreams.
Somewhere there is a little girl’s unused bike waiting patiently for her in a cluttered garage, I suspect. Perhaps her bed is made in an untouched room that only hears the pleas of anguished parents, praying and ever vigilant for their baby’s safe return.
I watch the teenager from the corner of my eye and she nervously glances at me as she writes. She’s like a gazelle on an African savanna, poised and ready to flee when her survival instincts perceive a threat. I devote full attention to my own writing, gazing occasionally at a passing lake freighter, hoping that the girl lingers within the distant border of my peripheral vision, but she does not. Abbie is gone, overly concerned of my curiosity with her.
I ponder the lake freighter, scribble a few notes on my pad about the sunlight and how patches of fleecy clouds split it up into slanting, radiant columns, and close.
To my surprise, the teenager has returned, standing behind me as she looks over my shoulder. The sudden appearance of her startles me and I twitch reflexively, feeling my heart jump-start my energy-producing adrenal glands. Her hair glistened with flecks of ruby dust from the last vestiges of the late August sunset, rusty streaks blended with blond.
She had a thin face with a pale, flat complexion shrouded with loneliness, and high cheekbones that haven’t felt a parent’s kiss for a little girl’s eternity. I’ll never forget those eyes: islands of curiosity swimming in turquoise seas, not bright, like a typical teenager’s eyes, but haunting. They were filled with unmistakable sadness and a vast hollowness as if she’d seen everything but saw nothing.
She asked if I was a writer, pointing at my journal with a dirty finger. There is an unspoken bond between writers; a bridge that can cross the deep canyon of a generation gap and Abbie and I met in the middle. She wasted no time in showing me a poem she’d written.
The words fell on paper like rain from a broken heart, yet they were free-spirited, like a wild Mustang roaming the western prairie. They were completely devoid of hope from an unknown future, but clung to the memory of a happier, distant past.
Abbie Angel asked me if I could write about her because she was a runaway; because she wanted teenagers her age to learn from her mistakes and to deal with seemingly hopeless situations rather than run from them. But most of all, to never letting go of that last glimmer of hope, that last shred of faith in knowing that there are people who care and who, in their heart, want to help.
Abbie, I would have adopted you as my own, to drown you in my love and affection. You deserve a good home, the chance at fulfilling your dreams and making wishes at your birthdays, and watching them come true.
You deserve so much, Abbie, so much more than words on paper could ever give you. You deserve laughter in the rain, to dance at your high school prom, to sample life to its fullest and know the pleasure of carefree wonder years. You deserve a family, Abbie Angel.
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"Abbie, this a plea from the author--please, go to a shelter; seek help, but please, don't stay on the streets. Please, go home!" -- Allington, toledo, oh, usa.
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