Hardship

one had a learning
disorder as a child,
one lost her father,
one never met his mother,
one slept on the
streets of new york city
for an entire winter
due to a struggle with
drug addiction and
lived to tell the tales,
one of moved to the
united states not by plane
but by being packed like
cattle into a pickup truck,
one was sexually abused,

these are all the token
people in the magazines
and all the writers
ever mentioned
was their
color.