War, Peace, and Pain

By Amanda Draznin, 17

We were born into a war we didn’t start,
Bred as soldiers for a cause we didn’t understand,
We won’t fight for you any longer,
We are the generation of peace and pain,
And we aren’t scared to die,
Not anymore.

You forced this bloodshed on us,
So we never had a chance,
Your conflict became our conflict,
You used our fear to keep us in line,
When that stopped working your desperation outgrew your incentive,
You can’t control us.

You’ve been fighting for so long you’ve forgotten what you’re fighting for,
We grew up with your trauma weighing us down,
It did not make us kind,
It made us scared, angry, and vulnerable,
We made ourselves kind,
And we refuse to let anyone else go through what we went through.

We didn’t chose this battle,
You handed it to us on a silver platter with a gun to the head,
So we took that mindless fighting,
Made it give way to peace,
We turned our pain into pansies.

We are the generation of peace and pain,
We don’t start fights,
But we can finish one.

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Many people might think that this is inspired by Gen Z or the current political climate, but it’s actually inspired by the Doctor Who episode “The Doctor’s Daughter.”

Instagram: @mandy_draz

Photo by Sarin Aventisian