Poor

Three flights of trash filled stairs, cat urine overwhelming, barricaded door, filthy floor, empty fridge, a kitchen void of food, five hungry kids, girls with no shirts, babies with no diapers, hospital sheets instead of blankets, empty wall sockets, nothing to fill the plugs, no TV,no radio, no blow dryers or cell phone chargers, no dressers, small piles of clothes, some in stacks, some drying on the porch that overlooks a litter filled street.

No beds, bare mattresses, things crawling under my feet, no room inside the walls, no fear of light, desperate for crumbs that are not there, the bugs become playthings for kids who have no toys, pets if they can catch them, and put them under a plastic cup, bare lightbulbs swinging from extension cords as I pass, and find a mother breastfeeding her baby, who is sick.

Yet somehow, they smile at me, and speak to me in their African Language that very few here will understand, and touch me as I pass, and pick the baby from the mother's arms, and take her to a place that to these people must appear magical.