As a child, my father would tell me stories of ancient Egyptian warriors
Traveling for endless days and nights across infinite desert plains
Showing signs of endurance and bravery I could only dream of emulating.
He would tell me
That, upon their return home, these warriors would be welcomed with a feast
Worthy of their bravery on the battlefield.
Years later, as a teacher in greater Washington D.C.,
I do now find myself traversing a desert,
Though it is not the one I envisioned.

A food desert
Is categorized as a poor urban area where residents cannot afford
Or are not given access access to healthy foods and grocery stores.
Every day, at 2:45,
I watch my students hop onto this leaking submarine of a school bus,
Every block bringing them deeper into an ocean where the only fish they find are fried,
Where fruits and vegetables just can't be found because there are no grocery stores here;
Just liquor stores and Popeye's,
Dunkin' Donuts, and 7-11's, children born into a neighborhood that fills more pollution than solution.
It is then I realize
That I am not too far from the deserts I once dreamed of.

See whether Anacostia or the Sahara, it doesn't make much difference because the [whole foods?].
Southeast D.C. is no different than the Serengeti
To them, brown-skinned little boys like my students are nothing more than walking cacti.
Just a piece of scenery, this world who taught everyone to stay awake.
Brianna
Literally has a landfill in her backyard
So she has a hard
Time convincing herself
The world then just thinks she's trash.
Restaurants come and dump the remains of food she'll never be able to afford
To eat three steps from her back door.

Jose
Eats fast food five days a week
Because his mother works three jobs to take care of six kids
And only sees her son when she arrives home from work
At the same time he's leaving for school.
He has gotten so big
That the excess fat ? his skin puts added pressure on his joints.
His knees are literally crumbling under the weight of this world.

Olivia
Watched her father shot two feet from her front porch.
She wants nothing more
Than to go outside and play at the park after school,
But gun violence has made a merry-go-round feel more like Russian Roulette.
So she doesn't go outside,
Simply eats any processed food from the cabinets
That will last long enough to prevent her from leaving the house too often.
These are my students,
My warriors,
Fighting a battle against an enemy they cannot clearly see.
These kings and queens,
Meant to feast not to fester,
But their zip code has already told them that their life expectancies are 30 years shorter than the county seven miles away.
I can see the faults of my own ancestry shaking in their eyes.
Diabetes and high blood pressure run through the roots of my family tree.
Heart disease is as much a part of my history as shackles and segregation.
So from my father's kidney transplant to Oliva's asthma,
These things are more than mere coincidence.
Both grew up in places more accustomed to gunshots than gardens.

So tell me place doesn't matter,
That the neighborhoods that are predominately healthy aren't the same ones that aren't predominantly wealthy.
Because when you're not choosing between buying your medicine and your groceries, health doesn't have to be a luxury,
Doesn't have to be an abstract concept that are presented in academic journals and policy briefs.

My students overcome more every day than I will in my lifetime.
They are the roses that grew from the concrete,
The budding oasis in the heart of the desert.
And their lives are worth far much more than the things that this world has fed them.