Brooke: Blessed Brambles

They live within the blessed brambles. Colorful shacks, scrapped together with old washboards, wood, bits and pieces of discarded furniture.
During the day, the doors are thrown wide, unhinged to let a small fraction of light enter their dark little hobbles. During the night, they crouch in the darkness–They lean together and sigh, like their haphazard houses.
Despite harsh conditions they hang curtains, create flower boxes, make noble attempts to beautify the chaotic mess they live in.
One shack has a ridiculous blow-up Santa Claus mounted upon the roof. The jolly red bearded man is its lone adornment. He is nearly taller than the house itself.
Children peer out of darkened doorways. They bite their lips and tug at their shirtsleeves.
Men sweat and trek through vegetable fields that have somehow magically sprung up from the desert sands.
I feel bad for treating them like a spectacle, but I watch carefully as they pluck fat red tomatoes from their vines and plunk them into wooden crates.
Papá is giving me the grand tour, keenly narrating as we hurtle down the dusty roads in our little car.
“These, are tomatoes” he says, gesturing towards the sweat-stained workers and their crates.
“Those are green beans” He gestures another direction.
I nod, and smile.
“This is a strawberry patch”
“That is a squash plant.”
Then, without warning we arrive upon the shacks.
Tossed and ugly, into the weeds.
The blow-up Santa Claus towering above.
The dirty children and their frazzled mothers.
“And that–” Papá continues, smiling sadly through his comb-like mustache, “Is poverty.”