Could you ever pretend to understand
living in a world that gave you no shelter
from the coarse wind of history
and the coarser rain of rhetoric?
The shambles of those walls offer no protection.
But, after all, they say
why do you need walls in the jungle?
No one has to tell you
out loud
that you were born
to be thrown away.
The ache of rotting teeth,
the feeble acquiescence
to raw sewage,
and the 400 dollar offer
to silence the poison in your veins.
They were loud enough.
I imagine there is a moment
between doorless stalls
and postless football fields,
where children, who grow like
wild daffodils,
see the other side of the bridge.
And then they know
until the end,
that it has always been
someone’s choice.
*Referenced from Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools, Jonathan Kozol, 1991. Chapter 1: Life on the Mississippi: East St. Louis, Illinois.