Our Cry

Our generation is not like yours.
In our generation,
children experience adulthood when
adulthood should only exist in the children's minds.
Children are coming and going, to and fro,
pushing and pulling, there and here-
and then they put their clothes back on
and go to school.
Children are being pressed down and suffocated
by the opportunities of their future.
Children are inhaling and ingesting and shooting up
the only antidotes they know for their
disillusionment and unhappiness,
attempting to enter a brief moment of existence
where their is no pain, where there is no fear.

And yet, you scold us.
You patronize us.
You tell us that we must act according to
a morality that suited your time,
but does not fit in ours.

Can you not see that we only want to live?
Truly live?
We want to love, and be loved.
We want to feel capable, to feel trusted,
to feel empowered and able and respected and honored.
Can you not see that we want to find life,
our life?
We want to own it, to draw dignity from it,
to create an existence that is worth claiming.

One day, our time will come
when we have no choice but to discover our way.
However, today, we long for that day,
the day when we find the path that is only real when we find it ourselves,
when we step through the thicket and bushes,
that scrape away the remains from our childish adventures down
other lying and false trails,
when we emerge onto the path of recognition and maturity
from which we will start our journey that leads
to the place where the sun sleeps,
just over that hill.
Only then will we breathe-
right now, we're slowly fading into darkness.