Marco Polo Alexander Rafat I lean on the side of a building in the ghetto. The building was once beautiful. It possessed the remnants of its charm, like an elderly woman. I stare at the sidewalk, at the creases that we used to hop over when we were kids. The cracks. They weren’t really cracks though. Our neighborhood was much too affluent for that. A girl walks out of the building. A shitty pop song from a decade before litters the street when she walks out the door. She leans next to me and reminds me what my name is—and how suburban white girls speak, with prepositions. “Alex?” I’m okay. The words won't come out though. I’m temporarily mute. The way you are after getting punched in the stomach, how that friend in high school that you lost contact with would keep asking you if you were okay and your wind would just be gone and you’d just sit there silent, trying to breath, trying not to cry. Imagine if that feeling lasted forever and all you could do
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