Desperation is your name, and your color is grey.

The baby wont stop crying. Just…she wont stop crying and its only 8am. Picking her up and bouncing her slightly on your shoulder has no effect on her hunger cries, just brings them closer to your ear as they radiate through your skull.

Now your son chimes in from across the room frustrated by the picture flickering on the small tv screen across from him. He goes ignored as you rush to fill the last four ounces of formula into the babies bottle, desperate for some peace.

With one hand balancing the bottle for the baby in your arms, your other one twists the antennas around roughly and a slight improvement occurs as the cartoon characters become more in focus. They’re still fuzzy but it’s enough to satisfy him as he is only three and doesn’t know the difference.

Finally it is quiet and you can breathe.

But when you do, you wonder why you wanted to so badly in the first place. The only thing you breathe in is the stark realization that you are nineteen years old with two kids to feed and all alone in the world. Seventeen dollars and forty two cents sits at the bottom of your purse and that’s all that will sit there until next payday.

Over worked and under paid, after taxes and daycare you make about as much as an immigrant sewing on buttons in a sweatshop does, perhaps even less…

Reaching for the phone you exhale a sigh of relief when a dial tone emerges from it, it hasn’t been shut off, at least not yet. You press the keys a little harder then necessary, a thousand words waiting on your lips but of course he does not pick up and only a few find their way into his voice mail.

“You need to call me. I’m STILL waiting on the money you promised me...”

Waiting. It was all you seemed to do, but life didn’t return the courtesy. Why you thought you could find one baby a father by having another is so far beyond you now but it doesn’t even matter anymore.

You bundle the baby tightly before laying her in the playpen to prepare your son for the cold air that awaited outside. He’s resisting the layers you’re forcing upon him and you find yourself starting to shake as cries once more emerge from the playpen.

“Just stop!” Your voice echoes out in frustration as the zipper on his coat wont catch. You’re now two seconds away from drowning them both in the motherfucking bathtub…

Desperation is your name, and your color is grey.