The pavement glitters under the black rubber wheels of my mother’s car.
“I’m Like a Bird” plays through the interior of the Prius, we exit the highway
to a part of town I have never been. Old neighborhoods with their chainlink,
sun upon the January. Can you count the dots of shadow in the asphalt?
I cannot. I have never been so lucky as to see with such clarity. I have always
been lucky enough, however, to belong to a church. There in the basement

we stood, placing snacks into plastic bags, no windows, just the basement
walls of cinderblock, and yellow tinted fixtures. But that light has passed, cars
pass currently, the ziplocs are in the trunk and we are further from the highway
still. I wonder who will eat these breakfasts–they’ll be brought over the chainlink
for the homeless children at Housing Families First shelter. Taken from asphalt,
their families now sleep on beds, awaiting approval of home applications always

delayed. I stare across the houses making up this expanse of middle class, always
clean and clothed, it seems. But one slip could lock a woman out her basement
entryway forever. A baby on her hip, a suitcase in her left hand, just a car
to her name. Where will she go? What will she eat? Many questions–highway
ponderings that lack a sufficient and entire answer. She stares through chainlink,
she counts to ten, she steels her nerves against the sobs of an infant, asphalt

watching the shadow of her Nissan flutter in its grooves. Cooled by winter, asphalt
is no place to stay the night. There is the money it takes to live, and she always
fails to meet that quota. Savings; saving herself from the wind and basement
bedrooms, disappointed aunties, colored-on workbooks that stack up in car-
seats. They would yell, and send her off anyhow, so here she is on her way
to receive what we have given. Someday I could be on the other side of the chainlink.

That is to say, I could be hungry and unhoused, few dollars to my name, chainlink
fence far behind, fingers tapping out prayer onto the wheel of my sedan. Asphalt
rushing below me and a wavering trust in the Lord. I sit grateful, now and always,
because at least this year and those before it there was enough to eat, a basement
or crawl space below a warm bedroom. There is the church, and Candace who’s car
got me home the Sunday we packed the bags with Fennec, Leanne, Adele. Highway

daylight suffuses the windshield. My mother is with me, and my hair’s tied high, way
off my neck. Our arms resist what force the grocery bags impart, they climb chainlink,
they help others. Any man’s God could be smiling as I carry aid above the asphalt
parking lot that surrounds the shelter. Any man would lend a dollar, if he always
held the pain of poverty in his shoulders, but the waifs in the margins and basements
are forgotten consistently. The man who takes our donations remembers, though, cars

that exit the highway to this place remember too. Children deserve homes, chainlink to
jam fingers through, breakfast, joy to spread across their asphalt wingspans. Always,
regardless of broken cars and basements—we were all the same angels.