You place your mug on the table, self-righteousness scrawled across your face

And with a sigh you declare that kids these days don’t know what hardship is,

And that choosing whether you want avocado on your toast or not just screams privilege

‘back in my day we didn’t have mental illness,

People were tough

We stuck up for ourselves’

As if throwing a cover over your eyes

Denied mental illness of its existence

And makes you a generation of people with more morals

As if you hold some magnificent ignorance

One that has been dipped in the beautiful metals of your golden age

And wears a crystal crown that bears a weight too heavy for the modern-day snowflake.

So, tell the sober 16-year-old at the back of the class

Sipping vodka out of a hip flask

That his attempt to hurt the body he hates

His attempt to forget that he is stuck in a body that he hates

is all an elaborate cry for attention –

that he’s coincidentally trying to hide from his mates.

Take the razor off that girl sat in her room

She’s only 15 but she sits watching her skin bleed

Each crimson droplet fuels her will to live

Like gasoline on a flame

Because she wakes up each day scared

Scared of what people will say at school,

And how much alcohol her dad has consumed.

Take a look at the girl curled up in her room

She had a presentation today in class

She said one word wrong and everyone laughed

Or so she thinks

You see, her brain works against her when it comes to speaking out

Because even though she knows what she’s talking about,

The words seem to come out wrong

Like there’s a fallen tree on the road from her brain to her mouth

And only half of her thoughts managed to make it out

So don’t tell her to just get over it

Your ignorance is admirable

But not in the way you think

Your ability to deny a problem so big

That it fills the hipflasks of underaged alcoholics,

that has been carved into the skin of innocent kids

and has made it out of the mouths of the unwillingly silenced

just to be shoved back in

is truly an admirable skill

but what made it a skill of which modern-day snowflakes did not qualify

is your ability to watch parents bury their snowflake kids

and still refuse to give a shit.