when I read that the average life expectancy for someone
living in the neighborhood I work is 68,
I sobbed for the circles my students will likely not circle around the sun.
I cried in the middle of grad class
then realized what a damn privilege it is to be crying
in the middle of grad class.
68 is 6 years less than the average Syrian or Iraqi lives to be
and yet we have the nerve to call them not free
while we steal freedom from our people
like Trump steals the favor of malleable minds
we call them uncivilized,
while we refuse to look after the welfare of our own citizens-
blame welfare
blame our own citizens
so that structure doesn’t have to hold itself hostage
for a handcrafted hell
and we don’t have to call ourselves culprit either
for playing capitalism like cards against humanities
capitalism /is/ the card against humanity
and we use cash to keep some quelched, quarantined
caged, cornered and corroding.
until the pure act of existing becomes so exhausting
your body’s like ‘f it I’m out’.
I imagine a morbid love letter to one of my kids like,
I’m sorry sweetheart but
science says I’ll live twenty years longer than you and therefore will likely be at your funeral instead of the other way around.
science say ‘the cortisol is already cracking your small organs apart.’
science says,
‘that’s what the stress does.’
science says,
‘that shit will kill you.’
science self-corrects,
‘poverty, I mean.’
I take science’s word for it because that is not my lived experience.
but in one of Philadelphia’s poorest and most violent neighborhoods,
I know I can’t be a shield for every kid soldier in my building and I know they’re mostly braver than I am anyways.
On this day, my mind keeps diverting to Delaware
keeps bouncing to bathroom blood baths over boys
I write in honor of Amy
a life lost to senseless violence-
the kind I see where I work everyday,
the kind born of stress &
born of stuck.

the kind I get the option to drive away from after work everyday
the kind my students simply don’t get to drive away from after school everyday
because on this day, I broke up fight after fight in an incessant brawl that broke out in the main office building of my school
it was an eruption of fuck you’s and student fists and punches from parents
that felt too much like bathroom
too much like warzone
too much like what shouldn’t happen in a space created for shelter in storm.
but this is a community so hell-bent on surviving that if they feel the need to digress to a dark Darwinism to see tomorrow, they’ll do it-
and how can we blame them?
when denied proper supports what are they supposed to do?

so back to my love letter-
if I could dice up my decades and distribute them equally among all of you I would be your grocery store,
your socio-emotional and physical health services,
your fairly funded fully funded schools,
your bullet proof vest
and everything in between.