Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Living on the $outhside was a war zone
Where I resided in little valley. They called it little Afghanistan. Everyone was strapped and war ready. Everyone ready to die behind what they stood for. We'd come from nothing and built ourselves up. Every nigga from the valley knew the bottom.
Violence, Death, and drugs ran though Our streets daily, but this is what we call home. Everyday you stepped outside you had to make sure your shit was in order because it was a possibility it could be your last.
Most people who grew in the $outhside died here too. You couldn't make it out.
Neither would I
I realized that the day I was shot. That day marked my end. The end of who I used to be, the end of happiness and the end of good times. Now I had battle scars. Another solider in the $outhside army. When you became a soilder you were striped of positivity. You were stripped of love.
You became revenge.
I was trying to fight that demon.
But after all that shit was taken away from me. I'd become a product of my environment.
$outhside until I die.It ran though my veins marking me and my grave. I was born to be this. There was two things you could become in the $outh a solider and a man. I was both.
To lose was to be a man. To live was to be a soilder.
I'd lost in the greatest way. Not only myself, but my heart. I wiped across my eye as a starred down at the two headstones before me. Surrounded by flowers, candles and photos her name was still visible.
Alaina Hart
My Girl
And right next to hers
Aliya Hart.
Her lil sister
This was the first time I'd seen them since I couldn't come to the funeral. It been a year since she'd died, and a year since a piece of me died along with her on the streets of $outh Avenue.
I squatted placing the photo of all three of us on the tombstone. I bit down on my lip to keep the tears from falling from my eyes.
She'd died because of me.
They'd died because of me
I fell to my knees as I stared at a photo of what was once a living body. It was all too surreal. Being here for he first time felt like reliving the moment I realized she wasn't coming back.
Alaina wasn't perfect, but she was down. I'd chased her and when I got her I let her slip through my fingers. Aliya was innocent to it all. Not tainted by how fucked up $outhside was. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
