Gray's 100-word story for June 7, 2025

Gray wrote the following micro-story on Hectalex on June 7, 2025. Each story on Hectalex is inspired by a daily visual prompt and must be exactly 100 words.

Poverty was a ninety-degree angle. She'd had her fingers and toes dug into its base from the first, ready to climb. The boat she'd borrowed from the man looking the other way had a broken motor, and this was another wall, but then he'd wandered off somewhere, so she put a wall between them in the form of distance. Today, her sixteenth birthday-present to herself was a wall. One between her, her mother, and the man who called himself her father but did nothing when that woman slammed her into walls. The rocks in front of her? Those were nothing.

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