an underserved demographic

Blue is good. Like the cloudless sky and crisp, clean water.

Yellow is dirty. Like a hazard, a warning, or a terminal disease.

For the kids whose parents had prepaid for their school lunches, they stood in line holding blue cards.

I did not hold a blue card. I was one of the kids that received free lunches. Not “reduced” lunches, no. I qualified all the way to the last step: fully subsidized.

I would stand in that lunch line, clutching tight to the only reason I would eat that day. I wished for some way to hide the yellow color of my card as it felt unreasonably visible in my small hands.

Lunch was free, yet it cost so much.