If you had known

At the time

In that very moment

That you had killed a little part of 8-year old me,

Would you still have done it?

And said what you did?

In front of who you did?

Because it still happens now

You don’t understand the value of my respect

Just like you don’t understand the weight of your oppression

How your opinion hurts

And belittles me

More than it should

You must have forgotten

What it once felt like

To sit in wonder and awe and the joy

Of being

But you’ve forgotten

So instead of teaching me my history,

You have taught me yours

How the bitterness of your first love heralded your opinions on teen pregnancy

Or the venom of your last love fell to the greed of man’s capitalism

You have taught me English;

The broken tongue of the people struggling to make a living

So that one day they might get the chance to seek the joys of being alive

And you criticize them for resistance to the system;

Of being a slave to the system

But I don’t think you realize

That you are the one

Controlling our futures

Shaping our mindsets

Killing our spirits

Just like your faith did to you

Have you figured out yet

That the hatred of the norm

Does not extend from the resentment of authority

But from the love of your soliloquies

How you mask your darkness under the façade of art

It does not make you beautiful

It just makes you pathetic.

Just like how you are trying to relive the glories of your youth through your masses

But I don’t think you realize

You are repeating the behaviors of your oppressors

And it has only killed all of us, too.