United States Code, Chapter 119, Subchapter I, §11302, “General definition of homeless individual”:
… the term “homeless” or “homeless individual or homeless person” includes—
1. an individual who lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence; and
2. an individual who has a primary nighttime residence that is —
A. a supervised publicly or privately operated shelter designed to provide temporary living accommodations (including welfare hotels, congregate shelters, and transitional housing for the mentally ill);
B. an institution that provides a temporary residence for individuals intended to be institutionalized; or
C. a public or private place not designed for, or ordinarily used as, a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings.


Cold. That was the only word that crossed my mind as I lay crammed against the wall beside my younger brother Lucas, our older brother Ryan was on the other side of him, all three of us siblings crammed on the only bed the shelter could spare our family of five, a passing observation of my current surroundings. Cold. It's unusually cold for even this city as it would usually stay rather mild for at least another month, even in the shelter the only thing that kept some amount of warmth was the crowded bodies of numerous people in situations much like our own. Lucas slept soundly next me, a small body curled up in the one cover that we had, he was very young and could not really understand our situation, so we did our best to keep it that way. Ryan may have been asleep, but it was more likely he was merely faking so our mother would not worry, it was more than likely that he was wondering the same thing as me, and the same thing as mama, the same thing we wondered every night, will daddy make it home tonight?

There are a lot of homeless in Alaska, I suppose there must be a lot in other places too, but I can only speak from my experience of all the shelters being packed to the brim with everyone who has no other place to go and some people unable to find a place freezing on the streets in the winter. My name is Miranda, I am the middle of three children and the only girl, I am 11 years old and my family is one of the many that are currently living homeless in Anchorage, Alaska. My father has been looking for stable work for over two years and my mother works part-time at a McDonalds to feed me and my brothers who are 5 and 14 respectively. Lately Ryan has been trying to find a job as well, but he made me promise not to tell mama and daddy because they wouldn't want him to feel like he has to help like that at his age, especially with him about to start high school.

Our lives are different from what people seem to expect, they assume a lot of things about homeless people, that it's our parent's fault that we're homeless, that we don't go to school, a lot of people even have this vision in their mind of what homeless people look like. We were not always homeless, Lucas is the only on that cannot remember the time before all of this, my father has a business degree but was cut from the company that he had worked for for seven years and has been unable to find a job since, he now stay out late going around the city looking for jobs in the same places he has looked a million times before. Me and my brother Ryan both go to school, public schools are required to enroll homeless students and if we didn't go then we wouldn't be able to eat lunch most days, Lucas doesn't start school until next year.

The soft click of the door being pushed open brings me out of my almost-sleeping daze, I peek up over my brothers to see my father slowly cross the room to sit by my mother, his eyes tired and the wrinkles on his face more defined than ever, I lie back down as images of smiling faces from what seems like a forever ago, memories lurking behind these two hellish years, smiles and laughter and the warmth of a home. I can feel the tears streaming from my eyes, hot tears noiselessly running down cold cheeks, the taste of salt filling my mouth and I tell myself the same thing my mother has been telling me every day for these two years “Tomorrow is just a day away.” and I can hear her voice in my mind, still soothing to me even as everyday I hear the hope slowly fade from her voice. Tomorrow is just a day away this thought brings me at last to the one comfortable place of sleep, because even though I know my body is not safe as I sleep, my dreams seem to protect me from everything that is wrong with this world.

“Mira, hey Mira...” Ryan's voice is quiet as it pulls me out of peaceful sleep back into the chaos of the real world, I turn to look at him and remember that we get to go to school, the summers when we don't are the worst, everyone is always excited to leave but we don't eat very much in the summer. I climb careful out of the bed, making sure not to wake up the still sleeping Lucas, I don't really have to do anything to get ready, I slept in my jacket and boots, like I do most nights, and there's nothing to eat for breakfast which means we're pretty much ready to go. The first day of another year in school, most of our teachers will be new since two of the old ones retired, one quit because of the terrible pay and they fired another, it's more than likely that some classes were cut because of this and it's definite that not everyone was replaced. I don't like going to school, I don't like walking there and I don't like the people that look down on me because I don't have any money, but it's better than not going to school.

I have math my first period, this is a small pleasure for me as math is by far my favorite subject, we don't work in groups and numbers are so much more simple than people or words, numbers are definite and I take comfort in the predictability of them. We had a new teacher for math, our old one was one of the two who retired, this one was middle-aged and surprisingly cheery for someone who teaches at this school and as he was passing out the very first thing we had to read he pointed out something he had written at the top of each page that struck me as very strange “Work hard everyday because you only have today.” it read, in bold letters, I looked up at my teacher and responded, uncertain and completely puzzled by this statement “But, tomorrow is only a day away?” he turned to smile at me, but now his smile looked sad, he walked over to me and said calmly “Exactly. Tomorrow is always a day away.” and that one sentence, that one short thing that this teacher said changed my outlook completely, I had always clung to the same hope as my mother that tomorrow things will get better, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. I realized that my life focused on what might happen tomorrow and not what can happen today, I puzzled over this realization for the rest of the day, over the way my math teacher smiles and those slightly changed but so very different words replaying constantly in my brain as I tried to work them out tomorrow is always a day away, but it's true, isn't it? I tell myself that tomorrow is only a day away but I do that every single day, and it seems to me like if I'm going to wait for tomorrow, then I'm going to be waiting a very long time.