Where I am From

(poems go here) I am from a place where I was loved, respected, and admired. Where I got a chance to change a school and live above a stereo type that tried to keep my people down. Where black women where nothing more than them girls who get loud, where black men where called thugs and hoodlums. Where single parents were the norm and where kids like me grew pasted it all. I am from a place where a mothers love makes up for a fathers absents. I am from a place where every day is a struggle to be better and to have better. I am the only one out of all of those who share my blood that God choose to go to college. Am I the dream? I am from a place where cousins locked up call just to tell you that they’re proud and to be the greatest thing this family has ever seen, where little ones say that you’re who they want to be when they grow up. Am I the dream? I am from a place where the sound of Marvin Gaye, Luther Vandross, Janet Jackson, The Pips, Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson, fills our homes. I am from a place where Michel Jackson videos taught a girl how to dance. Where the smells of soul food, fried chicken, greens, mash potatoes, backed mac and cheese, black eyed peas with ham hocks, corn bread, peach cobbler (made from scratch), cake, kool aid, spread across the table to fill our souls. Am I the dream? Where everyone comes together for births, and deaths, where love is a common language. I’m a child raised by a village, step coaches, leadership teachers, police officers, local thugs and baby mama’s stories kept me from ending up on the streets. I am the dream of all those who never got to live their dreams, I am the dream of a man who stood in front of million to beg a nation for freedom and right to all men, I am the dream of God because without him as my guide I would not be who I am. This is where I am from.