When I was 13 I remember looking up at the sky looking for a reason to believe that life wasn't an endless voyage of struggle for me and my siblings.

I was young enough to want to give them the world, but old enough to know a black girl from the south had no business believing that I could.

In those moments of feeling as the poverty would swallow me whole I would look up at the sky and pray.I prayed to god.

I prayed to my Grandmother.

I prayed to faith itself.

“Something better has to come. It has to”.