I have been taught all my life survival of the fittest. Where the weaklings are crushed under your feet at the base of your monument of gold where you stand tall because you are the strong one and the one who conquered. I live In a society where the only way to reach the peak is to use everyone else as rungs on your stepladder and yes, you reach the top but are you truly better than where you started off?

Still at the bottom of society, never anyone's priority. How can I move forward when all there is is moving back, as if moving faster can break the wall, as if punching harder can help you stand tall in a world where the tallest are the weakest, the ones who are given the things they need from birth and never by their own bruised and bloody hand constantly formed as a fist against the world that doesn't appreciate that we try to live despite the odds of never making it out of this place. Where the winners are the ones losing and we are never improving because we don't know any different...

We are told that we are not strong enough because we can't make it out of this pit that was dug long enough because no one can grow out of it for we are not tall enough and we keep being pushed down by the people who supposedly care for us. The weekened ones like the politicos who pretend to shed focus on gun violence and its issues but aren't at the scene where my comrade lays dead, a casualty of a war that we cannot win.

And yes, I know that there is room to grow. There is room to show that there is room to move and I move to rise, and wise up,when life's tough because it is. Survival of the fittest. My community's philosophy summed up in four words. You'd think four words would be sweet like the four letters of love, l-o-v-e, but there is no love in war. And the battle that we live in is raging through our heads, leaving some of us dead, but some of us living because we climbed to the top but are we really better off in the end?