Not a Single Line

I am so tired of watching
the same privileged faces on the telly
telling us we can achieve everything they have,
in business, in sports, in love,

and I look at their perfect skins
and see not a single line of life
etched in them.

No 3am shifts.

No choosing between the gas bill and the groceries.
No body that learned to brace
before it learned to rest.

They say: ‘reach.’
As if our arms aren't already full.
As if reaching is free.

I come from hands that worked until they couldn't.
I come from mouths that went quiet in the right rooms.
I come from the kind of tired
that doesn't make the telly.

And still they smile their clean smiles
and tell us the ladder is there,
just waiting,
as if they didn't pull it up
the moment their feet left the ground.