Hereon the stoop I sit.
I watch, as people walk by.
I see a man across the street, torn up clothing, begging.
A girl, and I say girl because she was still as young as the day she had fallen, carrying a baby.
This is my life.
I live in this place.
I see a man being hassled for cash.
And another selling drugs.
Here in the block though, we don't pay any mind.
I wait, patient and quiet.
There is a man who has to work three jobs a day that lives next door.
He has barely enough to put food on the table for his children.
Then a car pulls up.
Men get out with automatic rifles.
Storm the building across the street and kill everyone inside.
They get back into the car and drive off.
Everyone on the street stops, for here we are all family.
No police come to see what's happened, and no one comes into the building to look for the bodies until they start to smell.
It would be to much to see our family laying there dead.
The brutal smell lingers though, not of death, but of shame.
The shame we all feel here on the block.
The same shame the world looks at us with, when they all turn a blind eye towards our inter-workings.
This is the block.