Ain’t I a Child?

Ain’t I a child, delicate and fragile as glass? So easy to break, so easy to bend and to beat? So treasured and so valued. The very best, better than any jewel or cash. That single solitary fortune, who don’t know a darned thing? Worth protecting and shielding with all your mights and powers from a cold ugly world? The world I’m not ready for. The world who looks away when I do cry. When I do shout and scream for adults to hear my voice. I am a child. If I am a child then why is it us fighting your wars? Why do we bleed and die for you when all we want is peace? Ain’t I a child? Ain’t I supposed to be safe? You say, “love like children.” You marvel and you balk in joy at our friendships. Friendships colorless and hateless. Ain’t I a child though? A child don’t know nuthin’. A child surely couldn’t understand the ways of the world. The so important, so vital as we breathe reasons that “them is them” and “us is us.” No, course not. I am a child. And ain’t that why it don’t matter who I love with all my heart, whom makes me truly happy? I think too little, I feel too much. I must follow you, rage and burn, hurt and deride, anyone whom I don’t like and whom take from me from their hard work. When I have all the money and all the power.

I am a child so I must be taught. Taught how to speak right and write good. Speak soft and speak elo-quent-ly. Ain’t I a child? Don’t it matter when I speak? We do so your way, putting down our anger, making it bow to you to be respectful. We hold our fists, we temper our tones. I do it all your way for a pat on the head and dismissiveness in your placid smiles and rolling, frustrated migraines. We wear black to grieve fallen men and women. Boys who were our classmates, the girl in 2B who lost her Dad. We take to the streets not hurting anybody, because you do that all for us. You hose down the A kid in the high school, the girls with click-clacking hair making a few quick bucks. You hurt and you kill, you spray that cold water at us no matter our color black or white, entrap us in cages when we don’t smile and act like you want. You tell us we’re distracting, we’re crude. We’re rebellious and we’re spiteful. But ain’t I a child? A child doesn’t know hate. We don’t know violence. We only know how to love. We only get angry. I am a child. Excuse my pen for not writing so good but I ain’t doing it your way.

I am a child. So ain’t I supposed to be your future? The world ain’t yours no more. You don’t teach us and guide us, care for us for nuthin’. So we’re going to be angry. We’re going to raise fists to the sky. We’re gonna shout and holler and scream. Else you just don’t hear us. I am a child. I am your future, so, if you so do please, act like it.