• You have no idea how lucky you are until you have nothing, nothing at all. Like, nothing, stark reality that you have no place to go or anyone to call. Just yourself. Sleeping where you are not meant to sleep. It does not make sense to anyone until they are there. The people that pass you on the streets, pretend you are not real, they cannot/do not see you. Cannot see your breath billowing from the sides of your clenched fists you are feverishly blowing your tepid breath upon. The tepid breath you are secretly praying will stop filling your lungs, you can see the already gray sky becoming more daunting with shades of lavender soon turning into the sinking depths of purple then midnight blue. Purple and lavender, are my favorite colors. Now hold the keys to my newfound themes in my arsenal of of bad dreams and could’ve been. The purple I get to escape to if I ever find a peaceful place to sleep. 
• If there is one thing I have experienced in this life that has altered me, it is that. My clenched fists, ride or die feline, bubby she’s trudged this nightmare with me. “Why don’t you Just let her go, take her to the shelter, one less thing you’ll have to worry about.” This is all true, I’m sure. For normal cats and normal people. I am, on the other hand. I am far from normal. I have and always will March to the beat of my drum. The same is to be expected of the ride-or-die yellow-eyed feline that adopted me one rainy night Four years ago. That is when I had it, all. Everything was perfect then. And being a street cat I’m sure she knew perfect was fleeting. She knew far before me what perfect do to street rats like me. She held on although I opened her carrier. She could’ve walked out and found consistent warmth. She stayed, she’s my street rat cat. We’re a package deal. “The Street rat and her ride or die cat.”
• That is the name of this new chapter in my never-ending stomach-churning episode of the always-something syndrome. The street rat and her ride or die, cat. 

The thing is, she chose me, I was adopted and ungrateful not Grateful for food and the clothes, that stuff I used to but, do not have. Daily I am reduced to begging and staggering from the place where I am surrounded by so many but invisible to everyone. No one cares that you are someone’s mother or used to be someone’s daughter. Just an unplanned series of unfortunate events and you see all your dreams dashed and demolished like a million stars in the night sky That you wish on. Broken and wild. It took losing everything to know what true freedom truly is. Desperation reveals itself in many ways and to be so cold you start praying for peaceful sleep to never return. Never bother another person to breathe life into your cold lungs. For your rumbling stomach to stop causing you To wake, wake back to the cold torture that your mind was finally slowly drifting away from. But that rumbling reminds something. The rumblings make your eyes twitch, and your upper torso rises before your head can catch up. Hey Street Rat, did you forget? You must have forgotten you have a child to see past the sixth grade and watch grow to be a man. And do not forget the ride-or-die cat holding steady in your lap. The little rumble is the reason you offer your body to a stranger again. The feeling of watching your cat come back to life when she gets warm. And the sound of your son’s voice that tells you technically jokes without skipping a beat as you have never gone away. You get to pick up your million little pieces and try to build her again. She is different altered never the same again. She is getting warm. And now she’s promised never again. Ever. Throw at me what you will. You will never break me like the ice you did not transform me into again. I will never do that again. Do not fuck with me again. This time I will kill you right back.