Too Much, Too Soon

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,

while they ask us to mop up the damage.

We did not build this world,

but we are expected to fix it,

to patch the fissures with borrowed hope,

to carry the ghosts of their mistakes as if they were our own

to be kinder, wiser, louder, better,       

as if the weight of the future is ours alone.                                                                                                                    

I walk through halls where laughter fractures

under the hum of flickering fluorescent lights,

where we are expected to be children

but treated as data points

where our worth is measured in digits and deadlines,

where we grow up too fast and are still left behind.

I do not know how to exist in a world

that demands so much and gives so little.

I only know how to keep moving,

to sift through the static,

to gather what’s worth saving,

to carry the weight of too much truth…