Lil’ Lesa,

I found you in the cereal aisle. Curled up behind the forbidden—behind the Cheerios, the Frosted Flakes, the Fruit Loops. You had folded yourself into a ball. Only when I moved the cereal did I notice how tiny your body was, how fragmented. Your beating heart hurt, and your soft green eyes were half-mad.

You see me now—ten million miles from the promises we once made—and you think I’ve left you, too. That I’ve forgotten. Forgotten all the things that meant something. You think because I left those promises behind, I’ve become just like them. The inconsistent-parental figures who figured you were better off on the cereal shelf.

But you’d been hiding in that space long before the hurt. Before papa’s drunk-crazed eyes. You were so afraid he’d see you there—thumb in your mouth—and take, shake, rattle all the bones, spitting spattered matter into your face. His drunken-belted fist. It welted, swelled, and stayed. Then he’d make a scene, throwing cereal boxes and other things, saying, “Look what you made me do. Be appreciative that I threw that, tore that, made those—by doing that, I saved you!”

We ignored the lines he crossed—the promises, the relapses, the abuse. Until we couldn’t anymore. Now, I’m silent. I can’t bring myself to speak to him. I try not to care that he can’t move his body along the mountain line or fix the rusted ’67 Pontiac transmission. He crossed too many lines.

As a child, we learned not to move. Movement meant being seen. Stillness meant being forgotten. Momma taught us forgetting. She’d leave you there—not always on purpose, but always forgetting. Forgetting her promises to come back. We are still there, Lesa. Still afraid of being left in places we can’t leave.

When we became mothers, we feared losing our own children. We gripped their hands too tightly, tracked their steps, packed fear into their bodies, and marched them into a fictional battle. And now we watch their genes push them to run. I see it in them—the restlessness, the resistance. The echo of everything we never unlearned.

Underneath it all, we are still the scared child beneath the stairs, behind the book, under the floorboards. I tried to move my little self beyond the scared look. But you go running every time something is hard. Something frightens you, and you run. You used to pull my hand and wonder why my feet turned to concrete.

You said people like us don’t wait to see—we know what’s around the corner. We know that certain footfall. We can’t let them see us cry, never let them see us weep, because they use it as fuel for why they can rain more and take more. And I try to tell you: this time, it’s our children. And with them, they’ve taken my heart, my belief, my hope, my future, my happiness—and all my feelings have run off with them. But this time, I want to see. I don’t want to run.

And you used to pull my hand harder. “Don’t stay,” you said. “It only hurts more.”

But I want to stay. I want to believe this time is different. You don’t trust that, and I get it. I do. But I want you to know—this time, I’m not running.

You had moved an impenetrable part of me—one I forced into silence years ago. You were a figment of my reality, a small inconsequential entity sitting on a cereal shelf. I silenced you, convinced you didn’t matter.

But when I saw you there—thumb in your mouth—it reminded me of all our possibilities. I thought, maybe. Maybe I could love you whole. But you were the product of years and years of parental rejection. There is no easy replacement for that kind of ache.

Still, I kept going. On the cusp of something good—when hope flickered and love started to root—you quieted inside me. Part of you was proud. Proud of the life we’ve built. The stability. The safety. The strength. And yet, part of you was heartbroken. That in protecting our children, we taught them fear.

The doctors called it a blessing when they removed you from me. Said you must have had a defect. But I lost half of myself. There became two versions of me—one still laying silent on the operating table, holding onto you. The other, still sitting on the cereal shelf.

But listen closely, Lil’ Lesa.

You should be proud of me.

We never got everything right. But we broke cycles. We loved better. We’re still learning. Still showing up. And I’m not leaving you behind anymore.

I’m here. Still holding your hand—

Me
Prostyle score: 91