Nightcrawling

by Leila Mottley

It doesn’t matter how lucky you are, though, because you still gotta work day in and day out trying to stay alive while someone else falls through the cracks,

the helplessness of it. Like standing on the road that leads to here and noticing a path you didn’t know existed and not being able to take it. Like the road that leads to here was never the only road and time made me forget that until these sobbing moments when I remember, when the fog clears and I’m looking back and there’s a fork on the ground, another way.

I don’t know how to give a child answers that will fracture him. How can you tell a child he’s alone? There’s no way to explain the type of loneliness that finds its pit in your stomach, makes you think there must be something hidden inside your flesh, something to make this world turn on you.

“Nobody learns to walk when they got weights inside they bellies. I want you to walk toward the water, baby. I want you to swim.”