17 Poem by Aiden Florence

The end is near, you can almost perceive
How devastating our time here could be

Seventeen is only hostile and severe

It feels like we’ve been here forever
It’s been so long and we’re still not eighteen
It seems so close… we’ll never live to see what freedom is like

Now I find myself behind bars
Things weren’t suppose to be like this
There was a bright future that I never got to see
I was only chasing what I felt was the only alleviation to my scars
To the scars this cynical world had fashioned with boundaries…
Boundaries between 17 and 18

Why couldn’t we have all those opportunities when we were seventeen?
Why we’re we given death in stead?
How much difference could have one year made?

Crime or suicide
That was our fatality
All these people we knew are dead and it’s down to just you and me

I find myself in my deathbed
Realizing I have two days to live
Realizing how I would be 18 in three days
Realizing how I’ll never reach that line alive

This is a nightmare that I can’t wake up
Seventeen is the beginning of the end
We have the intelligence to acquire drugs,
So why can’t we have the freedom to do what we want?

Now I’m standing at the line watching you die,
When the day is over I’ll be lying under a stone,
Getting devoured by creatures of the after life,
Waiting for you on the other side

I never felt this liberation
I never imagined escaping 17 would be so astonishing