The other day I was thinking about this young lady who I used to love a few years back. Of course I never told her I loved her and I have yet to tell her I miss her but such is life. Men play a lot of games.  When she loved me I never felt the need to reciprocate and when she was gone I convinced myself that I didn’t care. Then I became lonely.

Sometimes in the middle of the night I would send a text message to myself and in the few seconds between my phone lighting up and vibrating on my pillow and me checking the message I would lead myself to believe it was she.  That she had once again disregarded her pride to fall back in love with me. In those moments I would get a rush similar to the feeling that a gambler gets while the dice are still in motion, or that of a junky when he finally finds a vein. Then, of course, I would look at my phone and see my own name. Me, by myself, in a bed, in a house, and in a world that could never love me.  Even if the world wanted to love me I wouldn’t know how to give it back. I am programmed to only appreciate what is ugly.

People from the ghetto aren’t used to having nice things.  Her heart was new when I first got it so I had to break it in. I had to bring it down to my standards but somewhere during the process she resisted. She refused to be slowly worn down like a new apartment complex in the hood, or robbed into bankruptcy like a new business. She refused to be pissed on like a playground. She wouldn’t allow the windows to her soul to be busted, and she would not be gentrified by the likes of me.

In essence she escaped.  Before she left she asked me if I wanted to come along but I, like a brainwashed slave afraid to leave the plantation, refused. I told her that this poverty was all I know, and grimaced as I slammed the trap door shut in her face.

There is no addiction worse than this man’s addiction to misery. There is nothing more confounding, nothing more pathetic, and nothing more consuming. Broken homes lead to broken hearts and broken souls that would rather not love.

There is nothing cool about the ghetto. We should never envy inequality in matters of the heart.

-YB