
Life of a Wallflower

​
I was cut cloth, half-sewn
from a mother who didn’t know her last name
but knew wealth as it came from
parent’s privileged pockets,
licked fortune like purple pomegranate juice
from effete fingertips.
I was nurtured
by a father who knew poor like the alphabet,
grew up tasting powder in his milk and
watched the world from beside the heater,
where it’s cold was not a complaint.
Now I am
paid bills and maniac hands under couch cushions,
out-of-state tuition and student loans,
Detroit summers and Missouri winters,
a boy who never learned his own address
and a girl who knew hers by heart.
​
I am the perfect product of merit,
brown eyes that take the world for granted.
I am clipped lawns that will never know
hand-me down houses,
but my father tells me not to forget.
privilege, through
my parents eyes
Photo Credit: Sam Lasky