There is a particular weight that sits on the chest of a person who is poor and responsible for a child — a weight that never fully lifts, not for a single hour, not even in sleep.

It is the constant, low, grinding arithmetic of survival: the rent that is always coming, the refrigerator that is always emptying, the shoes the boy is always growing out of, the single unexpected bill that could bring the whole fragile structure down.

People who have always been secure imagine poverty as a lack of things.

It is that, but it is more than that.

It is a lack of rest.

It is the impossibility of ever fully setting the weight down, because there is no floor beneath you, and you know it, and so some part of you must stay braced, always, against the fall.