<< Poverty Bite >>
May 03, 2004, 6:03a.m.

You never know how low a society will live, and if they know they are living it.

I arrived in the hot afternoon, in the backseat of a seafoam green, milk carton of a car. The trip there was only ten minutes, but just enough to pull all the oxygen out of my lungs, and displace it in the stuffy container.

I get out to find a brown appartment building. The windows displaying beyond your normal junkyard materials.

This was the trailerpark of apartments. Never an easy way to get there, and aways a right and left and another right.

We walk slowly under a narrow ally into the courtyard. Cats are the trend, and bask in the sun. A man with long, unbrushed hair, a untrimmed moustache, and an oversized jersey stares at me. He is the mascot for all poverty.

The two girls, Molly and Sabrina, that I follow, smoke their Camel cigarettes, and the smoke stains my hair. I walk into their appartment and a large cat greets my leg. I sit on Sabrina's couch and pat the cushion for the cat to join me. Sabrina tells me he is part wild cat and gray haired minx. My hand hovers by his mouth, and he grabs it with his teeth. Sabrina's hand lands on the backside of the minx, and he hisses in a furious rebuttal. She takes the cat and throws him into a room, and begins to cry.

A half hour passes, we await our fourth member to watch 28 Days Later. She finally arrives with her two sons. We watch the movie, and my lungs begin to close. I have inhaled a cat hair, and the allergic reaction is always the same.

After the movie, I feel light headed and high. It is almost as if I'm in a fast vehicle going up and down steep hills, and my heart jumps out of my throat. I step outside and watch a man with a bald head, and a knife scar walk across the balcony across from us. He stops to palm a cat's head. Molly tells me that in the last night there were cops everywhere pretending to be the S.W.A.T team. Many meth labs and coke dealers/abusers inhabit the complex.

The two girls take me home, and I'm still in my foreign high. All at once I want to burst into laughter and tears, but I keep everything at bay.

I love to see new situations... even if my life is at risk. I could easily see myself living in their situation if I had walked a separate path long ago. I'm grateful for straying and walking the path less taken, for it is brought me here to something better, and I am not sure if I deserve it.

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