It is not the singing of birds that wake me up, 
but the sound of heavy feet running up and down the sidewalk.
The sound of high-pitch puberty voices laughing and West Indian accents scolding youth that rings loudly like an alarm-clock to my ears. 
I was raised on a wide and long one-way block with luscious trees that expanded 
but grew small as my legs extended effortlessly, 
playing jump-rope and scavenger hunt. 
I knew every infrastructure and the condiments that lived on either side.

Thick clouds of acid air wraps around my throat, 
pulls at the innocent hairs of my nostrils, and drains the fresh scent out
from the pathway of my lungs as I hop-scotch to each pavement. 
The fortress built for my nose grows weak with every soldier of fresh scent down, due to the 4,000 chemical weight of this potent smell uprooting the entrance of the fort. 
The wind continues to act against me as it blows more acetone, the very thing I remove the paint from my nails with into the airway of my lungs,  ignoring my cry to be alive.
I hop-scotch to each pavement as more exhales full of ammonia  refuse to clean the fluids around my body, but pollute my ability to breathe. 
Another one lighted, held firm to the lips releases arsenic, used in insecticides, debasing my form of existence to that of an insect, killing the unborn eggs in my ovaries as I hop-scotch to the next pavement on my left. 
I picture my ovaries shrinking, becoming inactive, and turning black like tar. 
And soon, 70 percent of this tar leeches itself to the core of my female reproductive system, dosing detrimental increments into the brains of my future children.
I hop-scotch faster to get away from the highly poisonous cadmium, a metal used in batteries as my ears become dead to sound.
Cadmium does not start the battery of my heart, it encrypts the hardware system of my soul to a code unknown to the cells of my body, and instructs cyanide to poison more and more of me. 

Emotions like pain,
from the sky they rain,
wetting me until I’m soaked and aching all over, 
desperately trying to find that R-righteousness to secure me, 
that E-everlasting faith God has shown me,
M-mercury so potent it sticks and remains toxic,
E-enter, intercede, take control, 
D-drive the demon that tries to capture me,
away, away I Y-yell in hopes my voice is heard, pierced into the 

One million, un millón, un million. 
No matter what language I try to beautify this number, it still carries a heavy
immovable burden on my heart, 
as I process the six zeros in the number of no high-school diploma feet walking all over this particular pavement called education. 
A pavement so gum-tatted and worn down in broken neighborhoods, 
but polished well in green dollar ones, 
gets me agitated, frustrated, and sad that life is reality. 
As an 18, female, black Guyanese American, college student, I sit back in the comfort of my home and dwell on the notion that I made it. 
Made it through a battlefield: taking in swords from opponents name calling me Oreo.
Bleeding at the sides as I get pass standardized tests, SATs, college applications, and unplanned pregnancies common at my age. 
Running, listening to red drops fall of gang violence, drugs, scamming, drop outs on the back of my white shirt, as I do this all just to avoid
being a statistic. 
Why do I have to "make it" in America that's suppose to be my freedom, 
my pursuit of happiness, 
but yet many of its young Black and Latino population is in prison.

Makeup brush pampers the part I want to cover most, 
as I spend more time creating a new picture, than telling myself I'm already beautiful. 
My enemy, the mirror, perfectly clean and crafted hangs mockingly,
and points out the irritated, blemished painting. 
My eyes borrowed from a bald eagle spots ugly prey from miles away and swoops to try to kill it. 
Like a conqueror it sees all things sharp, dismantling food full of confidence. 
The rich, nurturing appetite that I obtain I see shredding behind the pounds of makeup,
behind the embroidery of the brush. 
I see myself shredding away and looking at those infant shreds as grossly inferior. 
How easy it is for young girls and women alike to get lost in a society of makeup and perfect appeal? 
In pressure so immense like the earth's  core, we cannot see it.
How many countless embroidery brushes pampered your face? To please who? 
How many volumes of the cover-up have liquidated your skin and you called it beauty?
My eyes borrowed from a bald eagle stared at me nakedly as I put my own brush down.