This poem is not about who I am and the life I live, but instead about who I'd be and what my life would be like if I could afford to live it.

The U.S. government isn't killing us with the spread of infection,
We are murdering each other by preaching the insignificance of human compassion.
This is the hatred epidemic,
Where love thy neighbor boils down to love only the neighbors with a steady income and a white picket fence
Why aren't you picketing greed?
Why aren't you picketing the habit of ignorance towards the homes that turn into streets for The people whose minds have turned against their bodies?
My father's body lays in the ground because of a disease that aged him before he was ready to grow old,
And my mother has held a job since the day she turned sixteen but she will never again hold his hand,
Because medical bills are expensive,
And the hospitals that could have saved him wouldn't accept our health insurance.
Why are you so afraid of bankruptcy?
Why aren't you afraid of pulling fathers from their daughters?
Why aren't you afraid of ruining a human life?
You've voted loudly to stop the funding for mental hospitals,
But with that came your silent vote for the destruction of morality
And an onslaught of school shootings
A drastic increase in america's homeless population
Whose lives will be next be affected by your desire for wealth, by your callous decisions?
Will it be that of an unsuspecting parent who defines success as financial stability?
Or maybe it will be the lives of his children, who have grown up on "always help yourself first,"
What would you do if helping yourself became impossible?