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The night is cool—
but cool don’t last.
It can turn quick,
quick like a viper bite snapping your cardiac veins.
On the Blade, daylight calm flips to heat
the moment shadows stretch across the strip.
Streetlights hum like spotlights,
waiting for their performers—
hardworking people crawling home in traffic,
immigrants siphoned from Mexico, El Salvador,
all of Latin America—
Goodbye mother, I love you so.
I wager on another.
Do not forsake me.
Dear Mother.
Dear America.
Adopted mother,
stepmother with cold hands.
Sprinkled in—
Black folk, shaded from obsidian to caramel,
anger simmering, resentment heavy,
many hustling for a quick buck.
Some abandoned,
some still searching for light.
This is America.
Work by day.
Fight the grind by night.
Homeless lean against gas station walls,
camp liquor store doors,
even press their faces through drive-thru windows—
begging for the gospel of a hundred.
Taco Bell. A night long gone.
An older woman, maybe sixty,
eyes tired, voice sharp—
“Can you give me a dollar?”
She got seventy-five cents.
Stared. Scoffed.
“Shit… what the fuck am I gonna do with seventy-five cents?”
Pushed it back like poison.
By night—
the Blade turns jungle.
8 p.m. traffic.
Bumper to bumper.
Thoughts racing—sting? Murder?
But no yellow tape tonight.
Music leaking from cracked windows.
Podcasts tangled with horns.
Shouts of “what the fuck.”
Chaos.
Headlights cut through—
and there he is.
Young man.
It could be your son. It could be your grandson.
Panicked. Sprinting down Figueroa.
Naked.
Free-balling.
Behind him—four shadows.
Looked like pimps.
Laughing. Taunting.
Word was they robbed him.
The kid hurls himself at cars,
clawing at door handles,
begging locks to break.
Windows snap shut. Doors hold firm.
Horns blare.
Headlights burn.
And just like that—
life keeps rolling.
On the Blade, one man’s nightmare
is just another Tuesday night.
Thank you, for dreaming.
Thank you, for the opportunity.
Thank you, America.
America.
🥷 You don’t have to believe. You can ignore it. But if you knew… would you believe it happens?
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