Lila

Lila works in the dead of night, standing beneath flickering streetlights, her heels clicking like a steady heartbeat against the pavement. Clients came and went, each carrying their own loneliness wrapped in cologne and silence. To them, she was a moment—something to forget or remember in fragments. But to herself, she was something else entirely: a survivor. Lila kept a small notebook in her purse. Her one time aspiration was to be a writer; an author, but life is cruel and her life took an expected change. Between clients, she would write—little observations, half-finished poems, dreams she wasn’t ready to give up. She wrote about the way the city hummed after midnight, about the stray cat that waited for her near the corner, about a life where she woke up without having to brace herself. One evening, a client asked her what she really wanted. She almost gave the usual answer—money, stability, something simple. But instead, she paused. “A morning,” she said finally. “Just one where I don’t feel like I’m borrowing someone else’s life.” He didn’t understand. Most didn’t. But later, when the streets grew quiet and the sky softened toward dawn, Lila sat on the curb with her notebook. She wrote until the first light touched the page. And for a moment—just a moment—she wasn’t what the world called her.