Her mother works at a beat-up Bennigans, half heartedly.
Counting tips the same way her daughter counts puzzle pieces, the big ones first
The walls of the restaurant are notorious shadow stealers, and by the time the mother leaves her shift, not even her shadow dares to follow her into the alleyway.
She walks, knee-deep in her own puddles of regret, hands glued to her piles of debt.
Cold, jacket-less she climbs,
Climbs the very stairs that the druglords dealt on, that the newlyweds met on, and that the bum slept on.
Opens, opens the very door the landlord raided, that the British invaded, that the architect from they'renevergonnamakeit Inc. created.
New York streets she sees: Lit up at day by dreams, at night by greed.

The daughter, the daughter plays hopscotch over her own fears.
Fears like how will I pay my way through school? Where will we live?
Where am I going to meet the very thing that takes me down for good?
The daughter, she contemplates, contemplates her future.
Her face, it sings freedom yet cries confinement, writes happiness on the walls of her soul with her own successes , yet can only draw sadness, the very sadness that every one on the street has come down with.

All, all that keeps her going are the meaningless games of meaningful jumprope.
When the basketball players bounce their own arrogance and shoot balls into baskets of bashfulness, when the runners run away from their pasts and fishers cast lines, hoping to catch anything but their own reflections,
the daughter jumps rope.
And somehow, her world hat spins webs around her tiny house, and spews sadness across her giant street seems to halt at her hopeful hopes to jump rope- her only way out of this town.