This Is Us
My Life in Their Frame
The pursuit of a PhD from my urban vantage point
--
what they don’t tell you
about getting your PhD
is that your childhood memories
of growing up
on the Westside of Detroit
and sitting inside of
overcrowded
public school
classrooms
with more students than desks
will be etched across
the pages
of your mandated
course readings
they don’t tell you
that your carefree moments
of sharing textbooks
with your classmates
and bike riding
up
and
down
pothole-ridden side streets
past boarded up homes
with caved-in roofs
hidden behind
tall dense grass
will be placed inside of a frame
they will
hang it on a wall
and gaze at it
and their faces will frown
while pity
overwhelms them
they will use words like
poor
dangerous
and under-resourced
they won’t
say the children
inside their frame need to be saved
but they will study them
they will study them
they don’t tell you
that when you read
their descriptions
of your childhood memories
it will look like a foreign language
although it’s written in your native tongue
English
