Poetry from my Soul

And the Children Shall Lead (version 2)

When you told me

that the Earth--

my  Earth--

was dying

I didn't believe you.

I didn't want to believe you.

But now I see.

The once-blue sky

now choked with steel and concrete

glows gray on my horizon.

When I walk

my toes curl around plastic

instead of sand or leaves.

The smoke and soot are cloying,

choking my throat.

It's always a red air day.

I don't remember a time

when the air didn't smell of gasoline.

I don't remember a night

when the outside world didn't hum with throbbing engines

and buzzing electricity.

Everything I own

came sealed and shrink-wrapped

in crinkly, colorful plastic.

I can't turn around in my house

without touching something made by the dinosaurs.

I don't want to live like this.

Yes, you love your stories

of children in dystopian worlds

changing the minds of the powerful

to form a utopia.

But when

a child steps up

you scorn them.

Greta, Mari, Autumn, Xiuhtezcatl, Aidan--

their names

slide off your tongue

like rancid fruit.

Why do you praise the fictitious ones

yet turn your nose up at the real heroes?

This is a story, after all.

We are in a dystopia

and the children shall lead.

Author's Note: I wrote the original version of this poem as a vent, after hearing my parents talk shit about Greta Thunberg (they were saying she has no idea what she's talking about because she's autistic and had an eating disorder). A few days later I felt like it needed more. So I rewrote it. I want to enter it in the Bow Seat Ocean Awareness contest, but you need some sort of adult sponsorship (basically permission) in order to do it, and I don't know how I'll do that. If I publish-publish this, I want to do it with my actual preferred pronouns, not the pronouns that my parents want me to use.

Check out the contest here: https://bowseat.org/programs/ocean-awareness-contest/overview/