"Brick weather. Unfortunately fitting. " Carlo muttered under his breath as prickling needles tore at his numbing cheeks against a smoky backdrop. The sun was still hidden behind miles of thick clouds giving the Bronx a grey hue. Like daybreak peaking through the fabric of a curtain, morning had only given way to muffled illumination. 

The only warmth available was in the red clay walls that lined the claustrophobic cityscape. Low buildings with narrow alleyways were used as paths for people to run through. No high-rise skyscrapers ever to be found, with buildings over seven stories normally belonging to public housing. It's not glamorous or larger than life - it's tangible. You can feel the chipping clay against your fingertips as you touch the walls, you can hear the scraping asphalt beneath your feet as you walk, and you can smell the laden with stories of a kitchen the night before. Traces of sazon, root vegetables, and cigarette smoke sting the nostrils. 

The Bronx is a place where all roads lead to getting out. It’s designed in such a way that people actually forget that some choose to make a life there. The stereotype that most New Yorkers refuse to learn how to drive was very true in Carlo’s case, as he lived and died by the 2 train. His home was located right near Crotona Park, a local hotbed for family BBQs during the summers, kids skipping school, young love, and first-time misdemeanors. He had grown up at a local church not too far from where he was now. Back then it was just him and his sister. 

Mountains of unanswered debt had left him and his sister fatherless. Their mother, left alone to pick up the slack until a drunk driver took her as well. Carlo happened to be dumpster diving, outside the church when the priest discovered him. He was saved, placed with the other orphans they had in their care. But, being born with a crooked eye and covered in marks of neglect, Carlo's adoption soon became an impossibility. His sister, not wanting to be away from her brother, made it her mission to be the loudest most unruly child she could be. If it meant she could stay with Carlo. It was then decided that the two children would stay, raised in a house of god to give back to the world. Carlo wonders where the plan skewed along the way. 

Lectures on God, reciting Leviticus at home, and getting top marks in his local public school became his life. It was so much that he only had one solid memory of that time. It was of all his friends holding on tight atop the large rock in the center of the Cratona watching the vastness of the sky. Feeling that if they let go, they’d drift off forever. This memory comforted him. It was the last time we truly felt uncertainty or had any sense of wonder.