Still Here
They say pull yourself up by your bootstraps— c
but nobody mentions how they took my boots three winters ago,
how the straps were cut by the very hands that built the trap.
See, homelessness isn't a moment. It's a system.
A maze designed without exits,
where every door requires an address to get an address,
I am a mathematician of survival—
I calculate the warmth-per-hour of library visits,
measure the distance between suspicion in eyes and the
seven-block walk to the shelter that locks its doors at 5 PM
for people whose interviews are scheduled at 5:30.
You want to know what the trap looks like?
It looks like: applications asking for three references
when everyone you knew stopped answering.
A bank account that needs fifty dollars minimum
when you've got forty-seven.
times twelve the ghost you're becoming
in the mirror of storefront windows.
The trap is a masterpiece of small print and locked doors,
of "Sorry, you don't qualify" and "Come back when—"
Come back when you’ve already saved,
come back when you don't need us anymore,
come back when you're not the problem
you've become in our paperwork.
But, let me tell you about survival—
Survival is knowing which dumpsters get serviced when,
befriending the cook at the diner who saves you the burnt edges,
When you’re twenty-seven cents away from a train ticket to maybe,
When your library card is held like a passport to dignity, and every public
Space kicks you out for the crime of existing.
Survival is the woman who shares her lighter,
The human act of kindness to make your day brighter.
the man who doesn't steal your shoes while you sleep,
the kid who calls you "sir" instead of "hey you,"
the tiny republic of discarded people
who remember each other's names
in a world that's made you all invisible.
I have memorized the invisible architecture—
the overpasses that don't get swept, the churches
that actually open versus the ones with signs,
the gap between public and private that I live in,
the thin ceremony of not being seen so you can stay.
You walk past me with your coffee,
your thoughts already three meetings ahead,
and I am Houdini in reverse— watch me disappear
while standing right in front of you,
watch me become a statistic,
a policy debate, a problem to be solved
by people who've never missed
a meal they didn't choose to miss.
But I'm still here. Breathing.
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