I’ve walked these streets since I was five

I’ve grown accustomed to the walk and the talk of this city

Tough love is what we’re used to

“No you can’t play outside, what if you get shot?”

Our childhoods are filled with violence and gangs

Our moms and dads working day and night just so we can live in this run down apartment

In this run down city

The drug scene vibrant, you have to do all you can to walk away

Walk away from those flowery colorful explosions full of happiness and desire

In the end, it’ll leave you in sadness and despair

You’ll be hanging on to those flowers because without it, you are nothing 

Guns are weeds in the yellowing grass

Instead of staying up all night, people are killing all night

Shots fired, but no one cares anymore

It’s the same as kids crying in the doctor’s office

Everyone’s used to it

You can shop at your so called “Tiffanys”

But you don’t know who killed Tiffany last week in the Bronx

Life isn’t just shopping on Fifth Ave 

We aren’t all rich white kids from the Upper East Side

We don’t have Bentleys or Mercedes 

We have trains that smell worse than a locker room full of teenage boys

We have neighborhoods, where used condoms in the streets are the norm 

No one ever talks about us

Kids here are forced to grow up too quickly

Filled with depression, anxiety, filled to the brim with anger

We are the kids who don’t get enough 

Unless you’re talking about drugs, cause that we got a lot of

Girls are the image of sexuality, boys are the image of drug dealers

Our words will cut you like knives

But in reality, we’re all just wishing for a dream to come true

We never asked for this life