Living Situations
Living Situations
My friend's home is beautiful.
It's got green walls with flowers all over. The floor is soft and plush. It's warm but only in summer, and it's too cold in winter. But my friend likes it just fine.
I walk by it after school and I see my friend sitting inside through one of the many windows. She smiles and waves and then opens the door that is more of a curtain and calls me inside to play.
There's a leak in my friend's roof. She insists we go to mine when it rains.
"Because the leak is so strong," she yells as we run with our backpacks over our heads. Hers used to be mine but I got a new one for my birthday last spring. Mama told me to give the old one to her. "The leak is so strong, my whole floor gets wet and I can't sit down anywhere."
I remember as we run to mine that she doesn't have a bed in her home. Mama and Papa say something about "poor living sit'ations." I don't know what that means.
My friend's home is beautiful when the sun shines through the windows. We lay blankets Papa told me to give her down on the ground, over the soft mud and plush grass. We watch the sunshine until it dips below the watery horizon and my parents call me to my home.
"I like your home," I tell her one day as I'm taking her to mine. It's snowing out and Mama said to invite her in, though we don't have much heating. Papa says some is better than none.
"I like yours too," she tells me. "I like your walls, and roof, and carpet."
I nod slightly as I take her hand. It's cold. She's wearing my old coat, everything else she's got stuffed in my old backpack that's hers now. She don't got parents to buy her a new one. I wish I could buy her a new one.
I look at her home, as I'm walking by from school with her. The green walls with flowers all over are just willow branches hanging down with the gaps in-between the leaves making windows. The floor is only ground, only dirt and grass. The snow makes it ice and mud.
My friend's home is beautiful, but it is not warm and dry. There's no bed. Only the blankets we laid down in the summer. Those have frozen over too.
"I like your home," I say again to her as we approach the red brick walls, the warm light, the dead front yard with a bike chained by the steps of my apartment building. "But I wish you had a house."
"Yeah," she squeezes tighter on my hand. Mama waves down to us from the third-story window. "Yeah, me too."
The Voice
April 2025
The Tomorrow Project & Burlington City Hall Exhibit
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