The South Side of Chicago is thorny and dark for those who don't live there; surrounded by people of all walks of life—or, should we say, from drug addicts to the mentally ill. For newcomers, your neighborhood is a beat-up place, marked on the map with a may be robbed or killed exclamation point drawn.

But if it's a death zone to some, it's home to you. Dusty, rattling in windy weather, and singing songs with cicadas at night—unless, of course, the silence is consumed by the shouts of a gun reloading or a bat hitting a bloody head. But even sitting on the dilapidated steps, a picture worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster seems as familiar as sunrise or sunset. Just part of the routine, branching off corners of the labyrinthine formation of your psyche.

A healthy childhood—a fairy tale for the inhabitants of facades gone to ground. Healthy love is a myth that came from hitchhikers telling stories at the pub on the corner. But like fresh grass growing on top of parched grass, sly vines of happiness sprawl over stony walls, avoiding trouble.

Carl is comfortable; he's not a messiah, not a saint, but in his own organic way, he fits the word comfort. You weren't raised with plush pillows to hope for the kind of normal love that people usually expect, but you try, and among the two-dollar cigarettes and empty Coca-Cola cans, you hide under his blanket. That's how children usually hide from imaginary monsters, and if your family could be called inhuman, then it seems like you really are children. It's healthy—just on the scale of your realities.

The smoke settles in your hair; it swirls around you because Carl is holding you so close that the cigarette smoke has nowhere else to hide—you're in his arms, under his skin and fingers, so supple, like warm clay, like a stream changing its course because of a small stone in its path.

"Are you asleep?" he whispers, not quite sure, because you seem so quiet amidst all the noise that comes into his ears every day.