And it was the day he cried,
tears in his heart, bravery in his eyes.
He watched the coffin lowered to the ground,
and he asked, “What a life?”
Another man was gone,
defeated by poverty; Papa Ade was the seventh person to commit suicide that month.
We are the definition of people born without a silver spoon.
Life tosses us anywhere it wants.
We are the advocates of the term ‘never give up.’
And for those who made it out of the trenches,
we are the slum kings.
Our slums are only remembered when they seek powers in boxes.
We are the survivors of oppression and social vices.
But with hope, we chase those dreams.
In the face of adversaries, we rise like phoenixes from the ashes of poverty and sickness.
We are the unsung heroes that people don’t talk about.
We are the storytellers.
We narrate the stories of our fallen comrades to generations to come,
not for pride but as a testimony of what we survive.
We are the slum kings.
