Stripped from Service by N.C. Garza (15, Mexico)

“…We thank you for your childhood.” -- Lois Lowery, The Giver

A creased sky, folded into little whys, little lies of what we thought being an adult would be
A horizon drawn for us with shimmering questions, false answers, and fairytales 
But we caught stars from stolen clouds,
The ones we touched with our bare hands
And never caught the dripping truth
The one we’d never saw coming — this would end
Our sky was built, our sky would tilt

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Coming of age, but we had no choice
The horizon sinking into time, the stars fading into reality
Age fell upon us
And we never caught the dripping truth
The one coming off our forehead — we needed to grow
We used to catch comets sitting on our youth

But the sky tilted, the lies brightened
They were incandescent, I saw them all, growing up isn’t fun
And we were stripped from our service
As if childhood were a service, as if war were over, and they thank us for having been free
A longing for reason in our trembling hands
The dead grass below, nothing makes sense anymore, all tales are gone
Because childhood reasons went scarce

An everlasting free fall hurts
Nothing will be enough again, all of our unanswered questions cruelly answered
In the limbo we live, that’s how it works
We’re on the verge of chaos, we’re on the verge of losing rationality
I’ll rue the day I forget we’re cursed
Never forget what you once were
As we land on the ground wearing adulthood