A Letter to the Grownups

It's not all the grownups, 

But it's too many. 

Nothing is how it should be.  

The world is heating.  

The government collapsing. 

Yet we, 

We are only overreacting. 

Nothing is the same as it was. 

We aren't stupid, 

And we weren't born yesterday. 

We are young, 

But we are not babies. 

Everything we do 

Is too much 

Or not enough. 

Why are we never enough? 

Maybe it’s just the age, 

But if that were true, 

Haven't you been here too? 

Because you don't seem to understand 

And all you can say is that it's "those damn phones" 

And if it is, whose fault is that? 

Because we didn't come out of the womb with a phone addiction. 

It is not our fault. 

This world is not our fault, 

But it is somehow our responsibility.  

And we will fight. 

We will fight as hard as we can 

And we will try.  

But we are still only kids. 

We are not babies, 

But we are still kids. 

I know that you’re worried about us, 

But we are too. 

We are too young to worry about more than our crushes and our math test. 

But we do anyway. 

We have to. 

Our childhood ended a long time ago. 

We watched people die, 

Saw trucks of dead bodies on the news. 

We weren’t allowed to go outside in some of the most developmental years of our life, 

Yet we are lazy. 

We didn’t choose this world, 

Yet we must hold it on our shoulders.  

In school, we must work hard. 

They assign so much homework, yet when we are relaxing, we are lazy. 

We are not lazy.

We are burnt out 

And stressed 

And scared.  

And we will get through these years,

But maybe we won’t change in your eyes. 

Maybe we will be frozen in time 

Or maybe we will grow up,

And you will realize that even back then, we were trying.