Said aloud in that driveway, with my mother’s swollen knees five miles away in a hotel bed, it became something else.

It became months.

It became every dollar of it a small betrayal, a wire transfer I had sent in love from across the world, meant to buy my mother comfort and rest, rerouted quietly into the pockets of the people who had her scrubbing their floors.

They had not merely stolen money.

They had stolen the specific money I had bled for, and they had used the theft to fund the very life of ease they were living on top of her exhaustion.

Every dollar I sent to lift her up, they had used to press her further down.