On Thanksgiving, my uncle would say grace with such religious fervor, honesty, and poetic sensibility that we would forget that we were hungry. We would forget about all of his demons, and he would forget about them as well. He would wipe his glistening forehead with a handkerchief as he spoke to our heavenly father for us. And we would stand around a table full of the most flavorful dishes. Full of food that we had been smelling all day. Food that the women of the family had put all the love in their hearts into. We stood there in reverence not only to God, but to the man that expressed our collective gratitude so handsomely. We knew that every alley that he had been in, every prison cell, every crack house, every dimension of hell on Earth that he lived in made his prayer the most worthy of rejoice. For we were the 99 and he was the 1.