On Unhoused
I need people who have never changed their address
to stop correcting my word choices.
I know what I said, and I know how suffixes work.
I need people who have never been displaced,
to stop telling my story and revising it as it exits my lips.
I know what a home is, and I know when I have and haven’t had one.
People whose mortgage is a third of my rent,
people who don’t know how expensive it is to be poor,
people who have never taken out a predatory loan,
or had clothes stolen from the laundromat,
or have never been openly mocked for their hygiene,
or never went hungry at school—
these are the people I’m talking to.
Those who have never been the “new kid” and felt
the demolition of relationships in annual cycles,
and those who are able to remember every building they’ve ever lived in.
The ones that have never had to speak to a landlord as a child
or struggle through an employment background check history.
The ones unfamiliar with the stench of cardboard or the harsh hiss of masking tape.
I need people who’ve built legacies on stolen land
to stop calling my people visitors and confusing generational wealth with better planning.
I know what genocide is, and I know where my safety net was burned.
I am not a person who has made bad choices;
I am a person who has had bad things happen to them.
I am homeless, and I’m not sorry if that makes you uncomfortable.
