Why I Love Han Solo

When Han Solo says:
“Crazy thing is… it’s true. The Force. The Jedi… All of it… It’s all true.”
Rey, Finn, and every Star Wars fan hear
their childhoods confirmed,
as if the wrapping paper tube
was a lightsaber the whole time,
as if Jar Jar Binks never happened,
as if we were never naive
to put our faith in clean firewalls
between good and evil.

But in that joy
we miss how Han says it
with the weight of a man
who’s lost it all
to something
he didn’t even want
to believe in the first place.

In the smoke and acid jazz of that cantina,
Could Han have possibly known where
Ben Kenobi’s simple job
would lead?

That he would go from scoundrel
to hero
to husband
to father
and back again?

For Han, when the Force Awakens,
it steals his only child.

When Han says the Force is real,
he isn’t exalting a childhood fantasy,
he’s saying that for some people the universe
is something that just

fucking happens to you

like freight trains
or drunk drivers
or suicide

and after you dig yourself out of the wreckage
all you can do
is go back
to the only thing
you were ever good at,
which was theft,
which is to say taking something back
from a galaxy that took so much from you.

Some people love Han Solo from Episode 4 to Episode 6
but the Han I relate to
is old Han from Episode 7,
because he knows what it feels like
to lose something.

My Han asks
where the Force was
when Snoke twisted
every beautiful thing inside of his son
into nothing but blackened gnarled wood
and a lightsaber so full of darkness
that it spits and screams and can
barely hold its shape,
a monster that worships
the family’s black caped mistake.

And in the bottom of his cups,
he screams at the Force
to take it all back,

to save him from Mos Eisley
and all his goddamn heroic choices.

That maybe the Force could
let him know
that he ought to tell
Ben Kenobi to fuck off
and find another sucker
for the galaxy to act out
its grand stories upon?

That maybe Ben
should find
some other fool
to save the princess
and marry her.

Some other fool
to lose his princess
his ship
his son,
who’s also named Ben
because the Force
is not omnipotent
but it does appear
to have a sense of humor.

But deep down, Han knows
“That’s not how the Force works.”

That’s not how it works.

It just grinds forward
through friends
through love
through children.

And if the Skywalker Solo family curse
is fighting
the same war
over and over again
forever.

Then in the end,
all you have,
is the choice
to walk onto the bridge

and tell your son
one more time
that you love him

and he can come home

if he wants to.