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.

It starts with her jaw. It opens a little at first and then shakes side to side, goes in a full circle, and ends in a yawn. When she blinks, I want to touch her face. It’s almost like my entire body wants to climb over her and touch the slope of her cheek.

I don’t know exactly what that entails, but I’ve seen enough news to know the only time a grand jury ever comes up, it’s because some blue-suit shot a black man and the government wanted to pretend they actually gave a shit. Never ended in nothing but black boy on the news, hood up, some report about how he smoked some flower in seventh grade. I’ve done so much worse.

“call him back.”

Don’t

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.

Somehow, I exited that courtroom with a different body than the one I had when I walked under its ornate wood ceiling, sat on those benches so many before me sweated into. This new body has a chain of holes from the throat to the stomach, where I have tried to bury myself in carvings. This new body got scars more permanent than any tattoo and calls them glorious. This new body got too many memories to hold up inside.

I am telling her how these streets open us up and remove the part of us most worth keeping: the child left in us. The rounded jaw that can’t even hold a scream no more because they take that too. They take everything.

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.