Unruly locks hung limply in front of dull eyes. Small hands grasped onto star-embroidered sheets, the young boy burying his tear stained cheek into the threadbare mattress his gangly figure rested upon.

A shuddered breath racked through his thin frame, fingers dancing across his stomach, each touch emitting a burst of warmth, scoldingly hot compared to the ice cold of his wet-walled, mould filled room. As he lifted his itchy, irritated eyes to focus on the cluster of stars visible from outside the small window, he sang softly to himself.

“Hush little baby, don’t you cry. Just sit and sing this lullaby. You don’t need clothes, you don’t need food. You just need a happy mood. So love your little family, and bear a smile for the world to see.”

His voice cracked with the final line, his sunken cheeks flushed and chest heaving in time with the shaking of his slender hands. Thoughts ricocheted around his head like hundreds of bullets, each one rippling into another choir of opinions filling up his mind.

It was hard, being poor. Coming home to the rundown apartment in which he lived with his mum. Coming home to an empty plate once again, as he hid the way in which his stomach growled loudly at every meal- or lack thereof.

But sometimes, it was okay.

Every night when his mum carefully tucked his slim body into bed, it all seemed oaky. The few days a fortnight in which he got a meal and savoured each single bit, it all seemed okay. Sometimes when he curled up next to his mum on the living room floor, a tattered rag draped over them like the finest silk blanket, as they both pretended they could afford to heat their small home that month, it didn’t seem quite okay, but it was their life.

And despite it all, he loved his life. It wasn’t perfect, not by a long shot, but between the dwindling pay checks from his mum, and the pennies he found on the streets, they managed.

And that in itself, was okay.

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