we were fourteen kids.
there were enough of us
to fill a classroom,
but we rarely went to school.
we learned what
we needed to know
from the streets.
school was pointless.
multiplication and cursive
wouldn't keep us alive.

one of us was almost sixteen,
in the wrong place
at the wrong time.
he got mistaken for
someone else, and he was
stabbed over and over
and over and over again.
we were thirteen kids.

two of us were nineteen
and almost twenty,
walking down a block
that wasn't ours.
we heard the shots
from our street
a few blocks over.
we were eleven kids.

one of us was thirteen
and on our block
where she thought
she would be safe.
she was pulled into an alley
and hurt in the worst ways.
she found out
she was pregnant
a few weeks after.
we didn't hear the gunshot
when she took her own life,
but we all knew she was gone.
we were ten kids.

one of us saw his brother
gunned down in
broad daylight.
he couldn't stop
replaying the scene
in the back of his mind.
he grabbed a Glock 19,
and he took the lives
of four kids from
the other side of town.
he disappeared that night
into the glow of
blue and red lights.
he rotted away in a cell.
we were nine kids.

one of us was a hero.
he pulled a woman
out of a burning car
and lost his life
in the process.
the newspapers refused
to show his story
when they heard
what neighborhood
he came from.
he died a hero, but
he would never be seen
as anything but a villain.
we were eight kids.

five of us lost so much
that eventually we had
nothing left to lose.
the gang life called,
and five of us answered.
we knew that
they couldn't be saved.
these streets don't
give people back.
and they'll take you,
dead or alive.
we were three kids.

one of us was twenty
and he thought that
he would make it out
of here, onto better things.
he was making dinner
for his younger sisters,
two beautiful little girls.
a stray bullet burst
through the window
and took him down.
the last thing he saw
was those two little girls
who he loved more
than you could ever imagine.
he was their older brother
and their parent and
their best friend, all at once.
they watched him fall
and never get back up.
we were two kids.

one of us made it.
she grew up, and she
moved far away from
our old neighborhood.
but those memories and
those losses and that pain
never left her mind.
she turned to pills
and then to needles,
and one day, she
took a little too much.
I was one kid.

I am one kid, now grown,
with thirteen dead friends.
I am a survivor, but that
isn't something to celebrate.
I shouldn't be a survivor
because none of this
should've ever happened.
we should still be fourteen kids.