Love, Practiced Carefully

In New York City, love is loud. Survival is louder.

Sky became a mother before she ever learned how to be a woman. Nineteen, broke, and alone, she raises her son in the narrow spaces of Queens apartments and double shifts, loving him the only way she knows how: openly, endlessly, without armor. Her hands are always reaching, her voice always soft, her heart always exposed.

Evan grows up watching the world give other boys what he never had. Fathers. Money. Ease. He learns early that love doesn’t pay rent, and tenderness doesn’t keep the lights on. By seventeen, he is sharp-edged and cold, a boy who mistakes survival for strength and shame for independence. His mother’s affection feels like weakness. Her sacrifices feel like failure. Her love feels humiliating.

Sky takes every insult quietly.
Evan throws his pain at the only person who won’t leave.

Their story unfolds in alternating voices, tracing the slow erosion of a bond that once felt unbreakable. Missed school events. Food thrown away. Lies told easily. Nights Sky works through sickness and injury, believing that if she just loves harder, louder, longer, her son will someday understand.

But some understanding comes too late.

As Evan rises out of poverty and into power, becoming everything he once thought would save him, Sky’s body begins to fail under the weight of everything she carried alone. In the end, love is not enough to keep her alive.

Love, Practiced Carefully is a bleak, intimate tragedy about motherhood, resentment, and the quiet violence of survival. It asks what happens when love is real, but timing is cruel — and whether forgiveness matters when the person who needed it most is already gone.

When Evan was little, the world was loud in ways I couldn't control. Sirens outside our window. Neighbors fighting through thin walls. Bills sliding under the door like threats. Silence scared him more than noise ever did.


I sang off-key while I cooked. Narrated everything I did like it mattered. Told him I loved him so often it became punctuation instead of a sentence.


"I love you," meant even if the world isn't kind to you, I will be.


Even when he started flinching at my voice.


This morning, I see him at the bodega on the corner before I start my shift. He's with friends. Laughing. Head tipped back, easy in a way he never is with me.


I don't think. I never do when it comes to him.


"Evan!" I call, smiling, lifting my hand.


Just for a second. Long enough for me to notice.


His friends turn. One of them grins. "Yo, is that your mom?"


I step closer, adjusting Evan's jacket automatically. "You forgot your scarf, baby. It's cold."


He steps back so fast it's like I slapped him.


"What are you doing?" he hisses. "Don't."


I laugh softly, trying to save it. "I just wanted to say hi."


"You don't have to do this," he says, voice low and furious. "Not here."


His friends exchange looks. One of them chuckles. "Damn, she's sweet."


The word hits wrong. Too small. Too exposed.


I nod. Of course I nod. Step back. Smile like I'm not crumbling.


"Okay," I say gently. "Have a good day, sweetheart."


I walk away before they can see my hands shaking.


At work, the diner smells like burnt coffee and regret. I mess up orders. My manager sighs at me. I apologize more than usual.


I replay the scene over and over in my head.


By the time I get home, I've convinced myself this is my fault. That if I had learned how to love quieter, subtler, better, he wouldn't hate it so much.


I open the door just enough to see him lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling. Music playing low.


I sit on the edge of the mattress, careful not to touch him.


"I won't do that again," I say. "In public, I mean."


I swallow. "I forget sometimes. You're just—"


I look at his hands, so much bigger than they used to be. I remember when they wrapped around my fingers like they were made to fit there.


"I love you," I say quietly. Not loud this time. Not unwanted. Or so I hope.


He exhales sharply. "You don't have to say it all the time."


I smile, even though he can't see it. "I do."


And I need him to remember that even when he hated it—


Chapter 5 - Love, Loud and Unwanted