I'm looking up at a world
Where all my friends are buying clothes and cars and
Dreams of the future,
Their whole lives being paved with a green that
I'll never have the luxury of seeing.
This is the glass ceiling of the haves and the have nots.
I'm tapping on the aquarium window
And watching my peers drown in their money.
But lately I've been wondering if maybe the glass is reversed,
That maybe I'm the one in the fish bowl.
Because I have limits where my friends do not:
I have budgets where my friends have shopping carts,
I have windows where my friends have plane tickets,
I have an empty stomach where my friends put on their dresses and suits and walk with champagne in their steps like its nothing.
It probably is nothing to them.
It's probably just living.
This is the glass ceiling of the haves and the have nots.
I am being denied
Privileges and
Priorities for the
Price of freedom and opportunity,
Because maybe happiness cannot be bought
But freedom sure can.
My father is proof of that.
Please don't get me wrong,
It's not always all bad,
Because there is a sense of appreciation,
Admiration,
Determination
That comes with watching your dad searching the couch cushions to buy you a cupcake for your 8th birthday.
The week when all we had to eat was rice
Still stands as one of my favorite memories from childhood.
But I won't be able to tell you how much it hurt
When my father came home and told me
"You can't go there,
I can't afford it."
And I swallowed my dream college like a dry pill.
And I won't be able to tell you how hard it was
To smile and say
"That's okay"
When I felt my chest collapse like a house of cards
And watched all my work drain like rainwater into a sewer.
And I won't be able to tell you how bad it felt to fall asleep that night,
Killing my fantasies like a massacre,
Emptying them from my head one by one until there was nothing but visions of a
Cold, gray reality.
This is the glass ceiling of the haves and the have nots,
And I'm afraid that I was born on the wrong side.
