Jesus loves you, the sign read.
A crooked heart leaned against the words—hand-drawn, imperfect, but certain. A King’s promise sketched onto cardboard, lifted above the choking traffic of the 101.
The valley swallowed me whole. I was just another cell in the city’s concrete artery, staring toward the San Gabriels where the light still knew how to be clean.
It was Saturday—my ritual of catching up, trying to make right all I had failed to finish in the week. I pretended control, though I knew I was bound to the rhythm of the world. But then came the reminder: a King loved me. Angels—Nicolas-Cage style—hovering over the City of Angels, whispering that I wasn’t carrying everything alone.
Brake lights hit hard. A sudden wall of red. My foot slammed down. In that frozen second, the mind turned to math—distance, velocity, time—searching for inches of mercy. I angled my wheels, bargaining for space against the chain reaction.
The spine of traffic buckled. Cars scattered into shoulders. A grouping of strangers, cold sweat binding us—thousands surely, in the wider world.
In my mirror I caught the wide eyes of the man behind me. He was already staring into his own mirror, and the driver behind him into theirs—a nesting doll conglomerate of ill-fitting figures, each forced into the next. Fear and relief stacked imperfectly, yet holding together.
The jam lurched forward again. Through the heat shimmer, I caught one last glimpse of that sign—just a scrap of cardboard, already fading. Still, it carried more weight than the brake lights: Jesus loves me.
And if that phrase doesn’t land for everyone, the lesson remains: life can stop without warning. The impact is always close. What matters is how we move again. How we make space for each other. How even a crooked heart drawn in marker can remind us that we are seen, and—by some name, some grace, some mystery—loved.
BB Grey--musings 
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