Nightcrawling

by Leila Mottley

Funeral day is a reckoning, when we mimic thieves and really just find excuses for our tears, then light up, eat until we have never felt fuller, and find somewhere to dance. Funeral day is the culmination of all our past selves, when we hold our own memorials for people we never buried right.

“No. I don’t got a problem with that, just like I don’t got a problem with Uncle Ty buying a Maserati and a mansion down in L.A. and leaving us out here alone. Just like I don’t got a problem with Marcus

spitting rhymes in a studio while I’m just tryna pay our rent. It ain’t my place to have a problem with somebody else’s survival. If the city get they money from paying to smooth over the roads on some rich-ass street, then they should go ahead and do that. Lord knows I won’t be thinking ’bout nobody else if someone offers me a wad of cash.”

Definitely should mind your business

I need her to tell me mamas can change, that there is hope for Trevor, for Marcus, for me.

whew!

She tears her eyes away from the road for a moment to glance at me. “If you did something wrong, then so did Harriet Tubman and Gloria Steinem and every other woman who did what she had to do even when it wasn’t respected.” She coughs. “I’m

*claps*

“Just because you ain’t his mama don’t mean you ain’t given him something can’t nobody take away.”

she was def that boys mama