Adelia

[13]

"This is where I grew up." She said.

A chalky sidewalk, a milky street, and stale, devastating, dying air. And that is what Adelia breathed for the majority of her life. Adelia's cardigan weighed her down, so much so that she just sat, on the spot where she and her mother used to sleep.

"Do you need to cry?" I asked. She didn't answer. Just patted the ground, and her glossy fingers felt the retention. She held the memories in her hands.

"My mother's dead now. She's been dead for more than a decade, " Her hands lifted to the bricks, "I wish I could feel her here. But I can't." And then chemical teardrops burned demons into her sleeves. She held herself. She was crying all alone on that sidewalk and I didn't do anything about it. I didn't even say a word.

"Can you feel her, Finnegan?"

It was as if I couldn't speak. She was talking about her mother, someone who wasn't alive and hadn't been alive for years and years and she was sitting in the place where they had lived their atrocious life of horrors. Adelia hasn't touched even an ounce of love in her entire life.

"I'm sorry." And that was the only thing I could say for the rest of the night.