Society Killed the Teenager

Don’t romanticize illness;
Don’t romanticize self-harm.
If you lost all of your control,
would you then be alarmed?
It’s the coffee every morning
that keeps you here, you find.
The rest of the time you’re crying
but it’s tears that make you blind.

You have a stack of blades
hiding underneath your bed.
Today could create world peace
but you just might end up dead.
Down the hatch go twenty pills,
so I’m unaffected by their drama.
Then you start to see flowery hills
but it’s likely to cause you trauma.

You stare endlessly at your blank wall
trying to find some glimmer of hope,
and nobody’s there to watch you fall
as you tie off the day with some dope.
"Snap out of it," everyone says,
but it just doesn't work that way.
I wish they would just recognize
the hurtful things they say.

Parents don’t communicate
as their child grows,
and people tend to inch away
from a man in dirty clothes.
A woman talking to herself,
a young child points out.
A child who knows no evil,
just wonders what it’s about.

The mother makes something up
and the child thinks it’s true.
How shocking to the mother
when the child grows up to be you.

(Line count - 36)

© Black Widow 2017