In a world of screens that never fade,
A voice is found, yet sometimes swayed.
In every swipe, a new facade,
A life lived fast, but still feels odd.

When I was younger 

Not yet a teenager 

I was

Unprepared and fragile

I had no armor

No ammunition

And yet I was put into

A battle

Me against

Every single person 

imagine this:
us, walking barefoot through the wreckage of melted roads
the sun carving epitaphs into a sky too scorched for rain.

They say the world was once wider,
measured in scraped knees and firefly nights,
in the space between streetlights,
where time was counted in the hush before dinner.

They call us the lost generation,

but how can we be lost when we see everything?

We inherited the ruins,

the sins of the past like notifications,

the echoes of greed carved into policy,

With voices like flint against steel,
we strike against the silence,
catching fire – not to burn, but to blaze a path forward.
We are not the dying cinders of something lost,
but the first furious glow of something rising.

TikTok scrolling, climate warming,
Ocean rising, forests burning,
AI whispering, futures shifting,
Polar ice caps, glaciers drifting.

[Alone in] Laughter, lamenting the lost light,

you don’t want to be the forgotten, the lost cause, the missed flight. 

Reason runs thin when your sadness is bountiful,

When I think about tomorrow, 

I see the calculus test I have not studied for 

and the five overdue assignments with long-received 

I miss the days

Where we would run through the fields

And swim in the pond all day

Smiling and using kayaks

I miss the nights 

ten tears that escape from the narrow corners of my eyes

flowing down my cheeks and onto my lap where they melt and disappear

even my tears have lost.

nine questions scribbled into a diary late at night

“Your grades don’t matter,” they say. But when you get a B, they yell at you. 

“You’re so healthy,” they say. But when you touch one potato chip, you need to stop eating so much.