A poem about someone who’s housed, and a few people who are not.

I don’t want to write anymore.

Instead, I want to draw tiny hearts everywhere,
doodle daisies on the arms of people I meet so I can show them
something can grow here

The woman who waits weekly at the pantry who revealed
she lives in an office building with her dog, her only loyal companion

The woman who took a year to confide that — at the onset of the pandemic —
she invited three seniors who were evicted to live in her basement, and that’s why she struggles

And June, whose voices plaugue her on every sidewalk — all that yelling
for what?

Tom, who asks me how much longer he’ll need to hold on, for whom I had no answer but:

The slow bureaucracy of government aid grinds, sometimes to a halt,
the machinery of compassion thwarted by a kink in the wiring

Most have lost their electrical connection to
caring at all:
reducing people to numbers
reducing people to mental illness
reducing people to addictions.

People.

I don’t want to write anymore.

I want to stand on the bridge that spans the freeway and shatter-shout
the truth.