MAMA PLEASE!!!

Mama I'm sorry, please, can I just come back home?

I'm only 12 years old in these Harlem streets all alone

I don't know how to feed myself 

Mama I need your help

It's so cold out here, I don't even have a coat

Mama why haven't you responded? On your door steps I've left several notes

Mama why don't you want me around?

My feet hurt so bad from walking the pavement of these city grounds 

I've had the same pair of wet socks on for the last 6 weeks

I miss sleeping comfortably in my own bed wrapped in my Scooby Doo printed sheets

I miss having a home cooked meal

Just to eat decently out here, I have go from store to store and steal

Most times I eat from the dumpster behind the local Burger King

I've been calling your house everytime I find a quarter but the phone just rings

I've already been molested by a few drug dealers and their customers in the back seat of strange cars

Most nights if I'm not getting molested for a few dollars, I sit on rooftops looking at the stars

Praying that God will find a way to get me back home and out of these streets

I recently seen my big sister and she said you took my name off of your apartment lease 

Is this true?

Mama please tell me, what did I even do?

Whatever it is I'm so sorry and I'll be a good boy if you just let me come back

Today is my 13th birthday and I'm spending it in a dark alley surrounded by people shooting up heroin and crack

I'm so scared that I'm gonna get killed due to being at the wrong place at the wrong time

Mama I just want to belong to a family again that's mine

Right now I belong to no one and nothing except my tears that I sit in every night

Whatever I did to deserve this, I've been praying that God provides whatever is needed to make things right

Mama I don't know what to do or where to go

Please let me come back home, I keep trying to figure out how I'm gonna survive out here and I just don't know

From the cops, the drug dealers, drug users, perverts and molesters I no longer want to run 

Mama please just come and retrieve from these Harlem streets your terrified son

Why mama, why did you let this reality come to be?

Finally you're here, too bad it's just to identify the dead body of this 13 year old boy that was me

 

Anthony Michael 2020