A never ending line of bills

Needing to be paid at the end of the month

Debt is in the trash bin.

Poverty is as stifling as the Miami heat on a Summer's day.

How can I make it?

How can I go on?

What do I do now?!

My direction is all blurry

and I cannot focus straight.

My vision is obscurred by dumbing images of happy families living happy ass lives.

I don't know whether to look up or down.

Because in this haze of stress and worry direction has no authority.

I am poor.

And poverty is what creeps from beneath me.

A cold chill runs up and down my back

And it is my only comfort.

Today I eat, tomorrow I don't.

The lights on, now it's not.

Water is cold, oh so cold.

The  water's off.

$20,000 a year.

Is not a liveable wage.

My mom reminds me to choose a major that will lead into a job/career with money that turns into

self-persevation.

CHILDHOOD

Almost close to being kick out of the only house I've ever known and placed securely onto the

streets.

Homelessness, once a foreign concept now in my not-so-far distant future

The Morgage wasn't paid and daddy- didn't care. It's no longer "under his roof", no longer under

his care.

Selfish man....

Responsibilities must be so freightening for such a man.

But I shouldn't have expected much from a man whose only ever just been Dad by name.

Adolescence

We narrowly escape living under a bridge.

There's a house we can rent.

Claps, happy, smiles.

But not for long.....

 The landlords are riping us off.

But we are disperate.... Tiny cracks around the house becomes holes who grow bigger by the

day.

The bugs begin to foster and multipy... As do the rodents.

We live in filth but try to keep our nice looking house orderly and clean.

The pest take over......

We are infested.

Sometimes I wake up to something small and slimy walking all over me.

The worn out bed I have to use is in my room, and I believe it has bed bugs.

I'm itching, the mattress is uncomfortable, dirty and old. But it's either this or the cold hard ground

I've been snoozing on for the last couples of weeks.

Our food is Mc Donalds, and Burger King..

My mother never was the kind to become a health nut.

Besides the dull meals were cheaper than buying fresh produce.

And besides the food stamps, we occasionally finished before the month ended did not cover

fruits and veggies.

Our clothes were often second hand, given to us by a sweet, little old man. 

Most of the clothes given to us were unwearable heaps of rags but among these were usually

something somewhat wearable.

The only clothes I would get that was new for the year was school clothes, I usually had to wear 

the same uniform and shoe for the whole entire school year.

That was all we could afford.

Late Adolescece

The monthly rent plus food, plus light and water bills etc. was too much

We lost the second home I've ever known...

Then we moved in with THEM.

A hard move for me.

In fact the hardest move.

It was either this or living under a bridge or with my father.

To me a no win situation.

My mom had exhausted all of her resources. We were booked in.

Forward to the domestic despute I wasn't privy to.

Kicked out again but in a radically different way than the other two times (Morgage Foreclure,

failure to pay rent).

Again I was faced with my third homeless crisis and I am only nineteen years old.

I feel I keep teasing poverty's homelessness.

We do a tango that never seem to end.

My financially stability have always been on a rocky slope because,

Poverty is such a soul cruncher. It takes away everything from you.

Even your dreams, hopes, wishes...

Late Adolescence/Early Adulthood

At nineteen years old I do not know where I will go in life or where life will take me.

All I know is that I will try my hardest to end this ridiculous relationship I have with my abusive

poverty.