Not tomorrow but very soon

Not tomorrow but soon, very soon
We will not know what to tell our children.

They will come running to us
As though to play but in reality for answers.

Why did you keep wrapping all our meals
In plastic, they will ask, their faces twisted.

Why did you take us on all those flights,
They will ask, their little arms aimed at the sky.

Why did you keep telling us to save our money
For a home, to try to buy a home?

Why were you so adamant about money,
They’ll pry, cutting holes into their denim pockets.

Why the waterpark for every birthday celebration,
Why those machines called theme parks?

Why were we ever encouraged to love the other animals,
To learn their names and their habitats

When they would all be gone and forgotten
Soon enough, become some mash for a 3d printer.

The children will become older before us
While staying young, their growth stunted.

Some of them will be smoking
Filterless cigarettes and drinking whiskey

Putting out the cigareetes halfway
Pouring out the whiskey on the rotted earth.

One of them will be the perfect embodiment
Of what generations of humans wanted to be,

A boy for life, able to crush his train in the yard
Then set fire to it without one genuine care.

The others’ speeches and questions remain the same,
Audible and full of integrity.

But we will have nothing to say to them,
They will have to run into the fire for answers.