The Cost of Tomorrow

Anonymous

January 2025

We file in line like factory parts,

Dreams weighed down by broken hearts.

Classrooms echo with silent screams,

Of children crushed beneath their dreams.

The anxious generation, they call us so,

Eyes wide with fear, yet nowhere to go.

Heavy backpacks and heavier souls,

Buried alive in unattainable goals.

The hallways hum with a fragile dread,

Where whispers of violence fill our heads.

Lockdown drills, like morbid games,

Teach survival in a world of flames.

We fear the bully, we fear the bell,

A daily march through a private hell.

Bruises hidden, both seen and not,

In a war of self-worth, battles fought.

But what of the lives that slip away?

Silent goodbyes at the end of the day.

Numbers tick up, another report,

A child lost to a world that fell short.

Grades define us, tests confine us,

Labels and ranks constantly remind us:

"Are you enough? Will you succeed?"

While we drown in the answers we’ll never need.

They teach us math, they teach us prose,

But not the courage to face our foes.

They teach us history, but not the cost,

Of a generation already lost.

Where are the lessons on kindness and care?

On healing wounds, on being aware?

Instead, we’re told to just endure,

In a system sick with no real cure.

The bell tolls, but it’s hollow and cold,

For a future bartered, a soul that’s sold.

And so I ask, with trembling breath:

Is this the education of life—or of death?