Alex - by Ayanfe Adeogun

Like...I want to tell you about a boy named Alex, and where he's from Before you hear the rest of what he's done Cos context matters, and I need you to understand The world that shaped this man Before the money, before the fall, before all of it begun He grew up in one room Eleven people, one room, do the math and tell me how that's done His parents, seven others, and him No space, no privacy, it was always suffocatingAlways choked up, there was no space to breathe inAlways noisy, always with everyoneAnd when it was time to bathe, you stepped outside into the open sunExposed, in the compound, where everyone could see everyone And you learned early that dignity See, Dignity is something that's earned, not given And if you were born like Alex, it was barely something you were living But the funny thing about poverty Is that it doesn't hurt as much when it's the only life you've known When all your neighbors share the same condition And everyone is scraping to the bone So he didn't feel poor, he just felt home And mama always found a way, and daddy always found a way to hold his own And for a while, that one room Was the only world that mattered, and he was fine with it alone Now his daddy couldn't pay for the private schools, so he went into the ones ran by the government"Educate the kids, the leaders of tomorrow", he wasn't sure the government knew what their slogans really meantCause the teachers didn't care whether or not they actually learntJust bop in and bop out, write a couple lines on the board, and boycott the school whenever there's a strikeAnd they'd be forced to stay in their houseFor maybe a couple of days, maybe one or two weeksWeeks becoming months, months piling up, and still there wasn't much to show But Alex kept on going, pushing through the chaos and the flow Found a way to read when there was nothing, found a way to grow And somehow after all the interruptions and the years of stop and go He finished secondary school And gave his parents something they could hold But university was a different story His dad called him in the middle of the night Looked him right in the eyeAnd said: "Son, you I've done all I canSent you to school, and gave you the things I never hadBut I need you to understand that I can'tSend you to the university without giving all that I haveAnd I'd give all that I haveBut you have two younger siblings and I can't afford to jeopardize their livesSo I hope you understandI've done all that I can, I hope you know that I really tried"Alex left the room after the talk with his dad,Tears leaking from his eyes, he looked up to the dark skyThinking that there had to be something he could do, it's a set backBut he won't take that blow from life lying down So he went out and hustled Selling things on the road in the heat of the afternoon Carrying goods across bus stops, trying to find his way soon Salesboy in a shop where the boss paid him almost nothing, swept and cleaned the room Woke before the sun and slept when it was past the moon And the savings grew, but slowly Too slowly, and the fees weren't reducing anytime soon He sat one night and counted everything he made across those painful months Added it together, set it next to what the school required up front And then he sat inside the silence of a man who's taking the full brunt Of trying to do it right And then he realizedThere's no reward for sufferingHe wasn't living in a movieWhere someone got vindicated after a lifetime of trying to do it rightThe good people suffering, while the bad are making millionsShady money, but money nonethelessAnd he wasn't going to sit and cry and lamentWhen there were other ways he could go about itBecause doing things right wasn't going to cut it Do you know how easy it is to be a sinnerHow many losses you need to be a winnerReason with a criminal who needs to eat a dinnerIs it survival of the fittest, or is he a killer?~Dave It started with a guy he knew, who showed him how it went A script, a laptop and a client somewhere who didn't know what he meant And the first time the money came, it came different from the money he had spent Months trying to earn Just a couple all-nighters, and he multiplied his savings by tenAnd as the money came in fast, and it felt different when it wentOut of his hand, and he had to do it againBut just once, he just wanted to able to foot his tuitionAnd just once, he just wanted to be able to afford a new phoneAnd just once, he just needed a pair of new clothesAnd just once, he needed something to give to his parents and his younger onesAnd just once, and just-Then stopped counting the number of just oncesCause before he knew it, that was his life nowHe had tasted the lifestyle, he knew how easy things could beSo why should heReturn to sweating under the sun making in ten monthsAnd amount he could make with just one phone callAnd with the money, he did the things a firstborn son would do He called his parents, packed their things and moved them somewhere new A proper flat, a gas cooker, his father with a full living room in view Not a room that was a bedroom and a kitchen and a parlour all pushed through And he watched his father sit down in a chair In a room that was just a sitting room And he felt something he hadn't felt in all those years of following through On every hustle He told himself it was pride And maybe part of it was true His parents didn't ask too many questions The answers didn't matter as much as the relief that was coming through And he kept providing And they kept receiving And everyone pretended that they knew But the giftcards and the wire transfers stopped being enough after a while The life he was living needed money that could match his style The clothes, the outings, all the things he was acquiring in a pile Needed funding that the online game couldn't always reconcile And so he started hearing the other conversations at the side The ones that happened quietly, the ones people spoke about with pride And I won't pretend he didn't understand what they implied Cos he knew Everyone knew He had heard those stories and he'd heard what those boys had tried But when you've watched your whole life pass you by On the outside of everything When you've counted coins under a single bulb just trying to afford the thing That everyone around you seems to have without the suffering The logic of a darker road Starts wearing a face you recognize So he went further And then further still And every time he crossed a line he told himself He had the will to stop, he would, he will Until stopping wasn't something he was planning for It was just a hill He'd stopped believing he could climb They came while the morning was still quiet and the street was still asleep Cars pulling up, boots hitting the ground, the kind of sound that goes deep Into your chest before your brain has time to process what you see Gate swinging open, uniforms pouring in, moving fast and free Through the house he built, the life he had arranged so carefully, saying"We have reports of a man into fraud,An anonymous tip said we could find him hereWe need him to come out before we tearThis place into pieces, we don't want to get violent"Alex found his heart in his chest, when he heard the first three words,And the first thing he thought was how to plan his escapeIf he could leave successfully, then he'd still be able to restart thingsBut it just wasn't to be for himThey saw him trying to run out, surrounded the house and shut him out before they shot him outThey shot him in the leg for the decision that he madeAnd the legs that carried him from that one room at every early break Through bus stops and the open sun and every hustle for his own sake Would never carry him the same again That was something they could not remake They took everything after that The houses and the cars, the accounts he had compiled Took back the life and left him with the leg and left him with the trial And left him with his parents who were quiet for a while Before the questions came With answers that their son could not make sound worthwhile I don't know what the final night was like Whether it was loud or still Whether he thought about the one room or his father or the bill That started all of this, that sat beside the savings on the sill Of a life that could have gone another way But I know he made a choice That being dead was better than continuing to feel Everything he felt inside that wreckage Everything that had become his deal And some days I'm angry And some days I understand Both things sitting in my chest like I'm holding either hand Of a boy who just wanted university, a chance to properly land In a life that wasn't one room and eleven people and the open where you stand Exposed And the wrong road found him when he was already tired of standing In that exposure With nothing in his hand There are boys like him Right now, tonight, doing the same calculation by the light Staring at the gap between the fees and what they have in sight And hearing conversations in the background that make the wrong road sound right I'm not saying what he did was justified I'm saying close the gap before the night does Protect your Alex Talk to him Before he runs out of fight

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