Nightcrawling

by Leila Mottley

Mama used to tell me that blood is everything, but I think we’re all out here unlearning that sentiment, scraping our knees and asking strangers to patch us back up.

School’s got as many potholes as the streets, always chipping, always leaving us to trip.

Mama is reciting these stories and memory is really just the things we trust to be ours and I guess I want this to be a story of Mama and me, so it is.

We’re all wanting something, though; most of us replacing what we really want with skin, which works until you wake up and the mirror is a blur of time twisting around the throat.

might have a moon in place of his heart: waxing and waning, trying to decide if it is whole.

And I am still waiting to be hit by some universe-halting love that will turn me inside out and remove all the rotting parts of me. Or at least something to make life bearable that isn’t another person who will leave.