In school,
I did not like math,
and now, I must admit,
I like it even less.
In the ghetto,
even though we are all in the same boat,
we are divided.
Father says we cannot help it.
It is what our minds think we must do to survive.
I look at my father with a question in my eyes.
“Yes,” he says, “it is a ’scratch your head’ mentality.”
We are hungry all the time.
Each day Mother opens up a small velvet pouch and
subtracts a small shiny treasure.
Mother is selling her jewelry to buy us food.
We eat, but it does not take away our hunger.
There is so much sickness.
Hunger is greater than dying, and dying is greater than death.
We are a pie chart,
just like the ones we made in school.
But here, our shaded area keeps shrinking because
The Living are less than The Dead.
We are a word problem the Wolves know how to solve.