07/19/2025
La Vida Chueca
Time changes a man. But not this Loko it was her eyes. Brown like my own. I really blew this time ese!
Marisol's scream. Barefoot on the porch, hugging a stuffed lion, as two officers picked him up off the dirt. A forearm on his temple his face cooking on an overheated hood of a squad car. Worst the high fives and smiles they had doing it.
“Please,” Lucky begged “can I just—let me tell her I’m okay—”
" F**k you". Was all I got.
The cuffs clicked, and that was that.
He turned his head, just enough to see her one last time. Her small face twisted in confusion and terror. She didn’t cry. Not then. Just stared, like she was trying to understand something that didn’t fit in a seven-year-old’s world.
That look followed Lucky into the backseat. Into booking. Into the cell.
It wasn’t his first time inside. Hell, he could navigate county blindfolded. But this time was all different.
He felt different.
He used to carry pain like a badge. Caught a charge at 13 for runaway. Robbery at 17, assaults you know typical teenage stuff. Now another fall at 21 — My car , his gun. What would you do? The streets called it honor. A code. Naw Just la vida chueca — the crooked life. The life you inherit when you grow up where cops treat you like prey and the rent's two weeks late.
But now? Now he had a daughter with eyes too big for her face and a voice that trembled when she asked why he left her.
He hit the floor looked up and after so many years he prayed.
He has to do 1yr
Three days in, Lucky asked for a pencil.
By the fifth day, he was writing at night under the flickering light of a busted ceiling bulb.
He wrote about the maze they trapped them in. About how a kid could be locked away for selling w**d while the men in suits made millions doing the same. He wrote about fathers who never came back. About mothers who aged ten years in one.
And he wrote about Marisol — how she once said she wanted to be a lion when she grew up.
He titled it: “La Vida Chueca"
