Who says I can’t be poor? Oh, the color of my skin?

Yes, it is white. But who says I can’t be poor?

 

Notions of race and class have defined me as white and rich.

Little does society know that the streets I grew up in were not designated for “my kind.”

The shadowy five dollar pizza place on the corner,

the alley way you know not to enter,

the park a few blocks away where the gang bangers are usually up to no good -

These are places of normalcy in my mind.

 

Our apartment is small.

I share a room with my loving mother.

My brothers share what was once called a living space.

Let us not forget my high-school teenage sister who could barely handle living within her own head

let alone a full house of people in which three-hundred square feet could not possibly oblige.

 

If you think our humble apartment is crammed, you should see the fridge.

My mother always told me sarcasm was a way to undermine the truth.

Our fridge provided us with means of life, but we did not eat like kings and queens.

We didn’t even eat like white people.

 

Who says I can’t be poor?

I have never known a life of security and wealth.

It was not until I reached my college years when I realized I was not among what was considered

to be the “minority.”

 

You see, the streets I grew up in were not designated for “my kind.”

Among my streets, I was a minority.

Perspective is relative.

Reality is subjective.

Notions of race and class are fake.

 

We are people:

Equally susceptible to poverty and wealth, fate and chance, tragedy and fortune.

Do not define me. I do not define you.