Soft Skin

Soft Skin

Our nation's youth are fragile.

They are formed by cracks on cracks on crevices,

Seconds from breaking and falling apart.

Broken by words not fists that form not sticks, but

Sentences that sever us, anger us, touch us, and torture us.

Why this sense of sensitivity?

Where is our strength?

The backbones of our mothers, who carried us to this point?

The legs of our fathers, who marched so we could stand?

We choose to sit on opportunity that other children beg for.

We choose to silence ourselves when we’ve been given the right to speak.

We choose laziness and idleness and worthlessness.

We choose to sit on cement steps under the sun, sweat fat drops of salt and waste time.

We are crying about things we can change and crying louder when someone tells us

To change it.

The world sitting in our hands,

And slipping between our fingers,

Can we catch it before it falls,

Or it will scratch our soft skin?