Y’all know Calliope – its own little galaxy in New Orleans. Findin’ your people on the other side is like shootin’ over to the moon. They long ago forgot about her. Don’t know you. Your daddy ain’t nothin’ but a word and the only future you see come from a box of Bally shoes you traded for two of your mamma’s rocks out in the yard. Henry and Midget backin’ you up like thugs in the rope-and-barbed-wire collars you made for them. A hundred windows covered in aluminum foil watchin’ you like eyes stand on the grassless ground.

You take those shoes down to some fancy-ass shoppin’ mall by the Quarter. The dollar you spend on a streetcar is the last green you have. Ten minutes later, that worn box of shoes you was gonna return for a hundred dollars – like that man said – is dumped out on the street along with your ole mongrel ass. But you don’t cry.

Why would you?

Don’t take that streetcar. You walk. All damned day. It’s a day from Calliope.

It’s dark when you get back. You remember. You thinkin’ about it all tonight with the sirens and the spotlights and them ghostful sounds.

It was Friday and Calliope was workin’ plenty down the cross streets. Strawberries’ heads bobbin’ in white men’s Lexuses and Hondas. Boys you once knew jacked up as hell, wide-eyed and watchin’ for drugheads to slow down and make that deal. Shit made out of flour and toilet water.

Room a hotbox when you crawl up the fire escape. Television on, playin’ BET and Aaliyah. She on a sailboat but dead. Like your mamma. You can smell Mamma now and you want to shake her awake, have her find people she know but you don’t, to get somethin’ to eat. Your belly all swole up after four days without food. You hungry and you know you need it. It hurt to even swallow.