Nightcrawling

by Leila Mottley

That was before I learned that life won’t give you reasons for none of it, that sometimes fathers disappear and little girls don’t make it to another birthday and mothers forget to be mothers.

A sad perspective of how the world doesn’t care if families disintegrate in Kiara’s words about losing her father and then the caring of her mother.

We both know that pretty soon we will have to contend with what it means to have lost it all and still have each other. To have lost a roof and found a home.

Like many black girls, I was often told growing up to tend to and shield my brother, my dad, the black men around me: their safety, their bodies, their dreams. In this, I learned that my own safety, body, and dreams were secondary, that there was no one and nothing that could or would protect me.