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New Orleans Childhood
Playground humidity before the body learns cost.
Children in New Orleans learn rhythm before reason — porch steps, parade routes, the heat that makes running honest.
Not innocence as porcelain. Innocence as sweat and shared popsicles and knowing which corners belong to which cousins.
The playground is not safe. It is familiar. That is the gift and the first debt.
Watch them climb. The city is already writing them into its brass ledger.
The popsicle melts before the song ends.
JV · Dark Heart Labs