First came humiliatingly loud pink papers that gracefully draped our front apartment door

screaming , “EVICTION NOTICE” every day after school

Then came doors kicked in

Bags in the hand

Thievery in the mind

The vultures came and picked at our things broken and sprawled across the sidewalk

and would just as quickly disappear back into their own apartments

No kindness to the ones who couldn’t pay a bill

No kindness to whom the luck just ran out

Neighborly love turned into the Hunger Games and our cannon had just been shot

Apartments morphed into shelters

Chores for food became a new meaning

My single mother morphed into a superhero

The unlucky ones with signs on the side of the road morphed into friends

Six years later

I’m writing this from my dorm room

And my mind is permanently set to survival mode

Holding on to everything that cold be taken away,

Finally grown with the door locked