seventeen years, eleven months, and twenty-three days. (seven days left) 

The laughing lights tremble across the earthy grounds, the unholy creatures croaking from afar; with toes of grease and soles of charcoal, my hands of blood, cuts, and bruises, the smell of the dumpsters trolleying along—it’s quite cool tonight. By the warm windows of the crackling fire from inside the closed-off nightclub, I look to and fro from passengers wandering the day away inside my unrecognizable life. I pick up the ashen newspaper from the dusted cobblestone curbsides, trailing the clacking of the midnight strollers upon the streets of home. 

The awning of the nearby bakery is a tinted red, one that had a mild resemblance of a cure of blood. I tell myself, today is the day, but I’ve told myself that for the past year and a half. My hands caress the ripped, vintage photograph of my past self—how soft my hands looked. I smile and wonder what life could have been like. 

With the soft, fading music, the city of lights, love, and theft is at its peak silence. I chase the silhouette of my winded hair, freely glazing the cold air of a French winter. Yet the fireflies are dancing along with me; I’m the star of the show. 

The clang of the church bells sends me back to the little wooden cottage on the corner of the peddler street. A row of ruffled beds encasing groups of abandoned children, each dreaming of a home and family—to be loved. My teetering feet whisper their way back into the dark room, careful not to cause any disturbances. One more week. 

seventeen years, eleven months, and twenty-six days. (four days left) 

Sitting to the west is a line of single square windows, each with as much of a view as a plain wall, except one—with a view of the whole city. As the sun rises past a new day without a 

family, the scuffling of the townsfolk scrambling to their lives, each as their own—I see my mother in the crowd. 

For seventeen years, I’ve asked myself the question every orphan asks themselves: why did you leave me? Out of the countless sleepless nights filled with burning questions and storylines seen only in the black-and-white, filtered cassette-playing television box in the basement, I decided on the idea that she was a young woman unable to care for herself, much less a newborn. The pain I feel through every breath, I hoped she felt during the four months I was in her hands—I’m no longer mad. 

In the photograph, my mother looks young, too young to be burdened with a child. Her hair is a dashing spray of red, her cheeks, a thinned out roll of bread, and possibly her most noticeable feature, the mole on her right temple, a single imperfection on a picture-perfect face. I hope her heart is filled with imperfections for leaving me. 

seventeen years, eleven months, and twenty-seven days. (three days left) 

I am given a plastic bag that holds a plaid shirt that I know for a fact belonged to the dead janitor, a pair of jeans with more stains than fabric, two black socks from the annual “save the children” fundraiser put on by the opera house across the street, and five euros, enough to get me through… maybe two meals. I reassure the few friends I made in the place I called home for most of my life that I would be fine. A few nights here, a few nights there; the nightly crows could be my friends, I said. I laugh along—reality is days away. 

My soul is a tarnished rose, flutters of hope trampling away along with my time—home? Only the second home I’ve been kicked out of— 

I’m too old to cry. With an inhale, the forming tears suction back into my pinking eyes, I don’t want to be homeless. My pillows are dry no longer, I blame the rain they say is to come. 

seventeen years, eleven months, and twenty-eight days. (two days left) 

I kick the ticking clock of a bag underneath my mattress; the dip in the bed where my stomach plumply lay on for seventeen years softly collides with the contents of the bag I desperately hated. 

Today there is rain. I look out the single window of action and stare into the worlds of the working class, much too poor to afford the taxi—who am I to call them poor. The hair of a dozen strangers, all painted red. All with cheeks hollowed out as if carved with a large, round spoon—each of their faces, a piece of my mother. 

When I stop her from hugging the falling calves of my lower body, the small face of the six-year-old girl, who has no name, is one that knows nothing of the horrors of our goodbye. No one wants you. No one wants me. No one wants us. Welcome to death row. 

seventeen years, eleven months, and twenty-nine days. (one day left) 

Everything is blurry; dreams and reality, a formidable mix. My shoes are expanded past the breaking point, with the laces tying the falling sides of leather together. The weekenders spinning across the landscape of France look something of Monet, flaunting their colorful accessories—their wealth taunts me. 

The cottage is at pure peace, the onlooking children doe-eyed staring at my back as I hesitantly admire my paced breaths of air. tomorrow. 

eighteen years. 

The bulking bag with already-loose handles in one hand and my life’s memories in the other. A wave here, a hug there, my feet drop at the steps of the small cottage I once despised, but where I now wish to stay. The striking wind and lowered sun. Where can I go?