“What’s your name?”
“David,” he whispered.
His voice was soft, as if it had learned not to take up space.
“Come,” I said, before I could overthink it. I held out my plate. “Eat.”
He stared like he didn’t understand permission. Then he took it with both hands, as if the food might disappear if he held it loosely. He sat on the step beside my shop and ate fast, but not greedily. There was a certain shame in the way he kept his eyes down, as if hunger was something he needed to apologize for.
Watching him made something old ache inside me. It brought back the memory of my mother crying quietly at night, thinking I was asleep, because she didn’t know how to stretch one small bag of rice into a full week.
When David finished, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and looked at me with a small, tired smile.
“Thank you, Auntie,” he said.
His smile was tiny, but real.
Then he stood up and walked away without asking for anything else, without trying to linger where kindness lived.
I watched him go, and my heart didn’t settle.
That night, I told my mother about him. She listened, her face tightening with worry the way it always did when children were involved.
“Did you ask where his parents are?” she asked.
My stomach sank.
“No,” I admitted. “I didn’t.”
My mother shook her head slowly, not in disappointment, but in sadness. “A child that young should not be in the street.”
I nodded, staring at my hands, feeling the weight of my own silence.
Later, when my mother asked about my savings, I told her I was almost there. I told her I could taste the dream now, the way you can smell rain before it falls.
She smiled softly. “God willing.”
