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Poem: Only A Number

 Only a number,

Fixed intent,

Work hard and pay your taxes,

The city is paved with your tears,

Starving to feed the extra mouths,

Rent paid for an empty fridge,

Children with lightning gold smiles,

Who possess a resilience harder than diamonds,

When all is lost,

Gather in numbers,

As the small kindnesses accumulate,

The silver lining is sharper than the knife edge,

And if they didn't have the children the adults would be lost,

Drowning in a tidal wave of despair,

Neck ache from sticking it out and holding it high,

Society has given you a number,

Remember that you were born with a name.

Remember that you are loved,

Remember that you are capable of loving,

Despite your rage,

Despite your fear,

You will always and forever be more than...

Grief,

Pain,

Low Expectations,

Heartbreak,

The sum of all your memories and all your losses,

You will always be more than just a number.


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A total of 6,848 people living in the city are currently without a home, according to Shelter. The charity says its analysis of official rough-sleeping and temporary accommodation figures found that one in every 81 people in Manchester is homeless - the highest rate outside the South East.

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This poem is dedicate to the people, be them children, teenagers or adults who have no home, who call Manchester home. It's also dedicated to the people who fall through the cracks while fighting their battles of addiction. I'm sorry that the system is broken and continually fails the majority. I've been through this system personally and will always be grateful for the support I received but it broke my heart seeing the micro aggressive injustices occurring around me, and terrified me, knowing that as a single black woman, with no connection to the city whatsoever, I could so easily be lost inside a system that can be so humiliating and dehumanizing. 

Basic human rights have to be fought for every day. I will never forget the kindness of strangers, of friends. I cannot fix the world, but I understand that kindness is a conscious decision that each human being can make and it is one I try to make every day, if not to others than definitely to myself, which is often very hard for me to do, but I keep trying. 





Comments

  1. KevinMay 28, 2022 at 10:53 AM

    Upon moving to Manchester in 2018, from a nominally developing country, the first thing that shocked me was the amount of homelessness. My Daily Mail-reading family believe most of them are faking it, but they struggle to explain why the number of 'fakes' more than doubled during the David Cameron and Theresa May premierships

    ReplyDelete
  2. KevinMarch 21, 2025 at 2:59 AM

    Manchester's homelessness crisis is comprehensively addressed in this song https://youtu.be/D7lQuuGowf0?si=iGVmropDth-UZaiJ&t=1056

    ReplyDelete

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