What we teach our children

We should be teaching our children

That they are beautiful on the inside.

We should be teaching our children

To express emotion and not rage.

We should be teaching them about

The beauty in the world and not the ugliness.

For I have seen their eyes.

Spilt second-one blink

And an ocean turns to flames.

I’ve seen chairs fly, blood run, and words blast

Faster than you can breathe.

Each mutilate their bodies

Chipping away any sense of humility.

I tell them,

Believe in change.

Believe in what you want to happen,

And not what will.

But we don’t teach them how to see

We teach them how to look-

Between the lies.

These eyes show another world.

Just a simple gloss

Can describe the deepest evocation.

Pain no matter how well hidden

Escapes.

As humans,

We pride ourselves in how well we can appear

“normal”.

But time burns the wax off the lips.

The eyes leak,

A soul torn,

A trendy manipulation-

We teach our children.