This World We Live in is Haunting

By Aliyah Sumar

This world that we live in is haunting,

Filled with a race of diseased rats

Killing to kill rather than live,

Spreading poison, fear, death,

And eliciting a fight or flight that lasts for life.

We walk past ghosts,

Empty shells void of souls,

Carved out by the big bad world, made only harder by the big bad men that claim

Preexisting harshness as their excuse for hurt

Claiming it acceptable

Claiming it just

Claiming it necessary to our growth when we are actually truly stunted.

And from these big bad men, the ghostly echo is growing in our atmosphere:

The birds no longer chirp where the trucks puff smoke;

The grass no longer grows where the factories dump waste;

The humans no longer live where the air has turned toxic,

And we keep running.

From this,

Our streets are empty

Our clouds are smoke

Our water is thick sewage running through the cracks where our children play

Why have we made it this way?

When will we do something today?

It’s time to stop letting the rats rule our lives

And do something

For our future

Or else,

We will all be ghosts,

Hollowed out –

not by the men, not by the race, not from the toxic air, but from our own mistakes.

And once us ghosts are gone, the birds will sing again.