I don’t know if this counts as a confession, not really. It’s more like… a feeling I have sometimes. I’m an old person, or at least I feel old. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how things turn out, you know? And there’s this one thing, this one situation, that just keeps coming back to me. It happened a long time ago. (Maybe it still happens, I don’t know.) It wasn’t MY situation, not directly. It was someone I knew. A kid. (A really young kid.) And I think maybe I should have done something. Or said something. But I didn’t. And now it just… sits with me. Like a little stone in my shoe. This kid, they were so young. Twelve, I think. And they had all these younger ones. Three of them. And their parent worked all night, at the hospital. So this kid, this twelve-year-old, they were in charge. Every single night. They’d cook dinner for everyone, and then they’d make sure the homework got done. Every night. And I saw it. I saw how tired they were. And how… small they seemed, carrying all that. I was doing my own thing back then, trying to make my art happen, you know? (It was hard, really hard to make ends meet.) And I just… I didn’t see it clearly enough, maybe. I thought, well, that’s just how it is for some people. That’s just life. But now, looking back, I think maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it wasn’t just life. Maybe it was too much. WAY too much for a kid. And I just stood by. I mean, I smiled, I said hi, I probably even complimented them on how responsible they were. (Oh god, that makes it worse, doesn’t it?) I don’t know what I could have done. I was struggling too. I had my own things. But still. It just feels… wrong. That I didn’t see it for what it was. And now that kid is probably grown up, and I wonder what they remember. I wonder if they ever think about how much they had to do back then. And if they ever wonder why no one… no one stepped in. I think about it a lot. Too much, probably.