A lifetime of broken plates and bruised knuckles will chase you out of your cradle before the typhoon does. 

I don’t remember the day I left well, only all that came after. I remember the wanting, the long road ahead and how it laid itself bare for me, enticing as it was deadly. It was a freefall–but even then, I had known that staying would have killed me faster. A distant connection afforded me a drawbridge. I let myself take the lifeline in the middle of nowhere. Nothing is something. Something is nothing.

I walk home many nights. In Florida, space is everywhere, as if two hands wrenched into the land and smoothed it apart. Everything is far; everything is expensive. I never had a car. I lacked the focus, the attentiveness. If I drove, I’d be forfeiting my life in exchange for a few miles at best.

So I walk. Under the balmy night, a veil of beach dew drifts all around. I pace across worn concrete and sidewalks that fade into wide roads. 

Peace always slinks right into me when I enter my neighborhood. It’s a bit of a dump, really–for years, I had lived in its shadow, too ashamed to show people the vibrant little junkyard I call home. But in reality, the people here taught me more about living than my own parents did. Life was a vanishing act. If I wore myself down to a spackle of concrete, the wad of gum beneath your shoe, the Ace of Spades you could never find–you wouldn’t know. You wouldn’t know I was right here. I wanted that. There was failure etched into my face, my nails, my bones, and I didn’t know how to hide it.

But when I cross the street, I see flocks of children jumping about, like ducklings learning to fan out their wings. Sometimes, a father or brother keeps watch over them with his head held high and the threat of a smile bursting at the edges of his mouth. 

I’d see a boy and his chubby-cheeked baby brother striding down the street in a toy car, the older son buzzing through his teeth. The two wheeled through the neighborhood at 15 footsteps per minute. I’d see a girl quietly holding a poodle the size of her torso, her father prattling on the phone in another language next to her. Neither’s presence had disrupted the other’s contentment. I’d see a group of adults, with hard-lined faces and glowing cheeks, seated around small tables draped in dove grey cloth; small candles were lit on each one, all those in their company warmed by that embolic gold light. It was a party for a few set on a small strip of dying grass–and with faces so bright with festivity the world may as well be their own ballroom.

More than the fanfare of a job, or the adrenaline of a blood-bouncing night, these are the moments that warm me deep within. A quiet happiness; a humble happiness. That happiness that pushes through when you’re in a world where it’s defined by grandiose metrics you’ll never measure up to. The happiness that you siphon from around you, that you transmute with the sheer stubbornness of love. It is a happiness that exists simply because it wants to. And isn’t that enough–to want to be happy?

Ours is a fragile neighborhood. These mobile homes, they weren’t built to weather storms, they were built to be collateral for them. Slack walls and fake floors and pipes that break, vents that wheeze, heat and cold that refuse to marry: these houses live against your will. Every year, we are left to wonder what we will lose and when we will lose it. 

I had once asked my housemate–why do they do it? Why do they build gardens only they will see, paint over doors that will be washed away by the rain, shape out balustrades for the wind to bludgeon? It could all disappear so easily. It could be broken in an instant. Why put so much of yourself into something that could be taken from you with such ease? 

She shrugged. Said one thing and nothing else: This is their home. This is what they have. Why wouldn’t they?