When we were young,

They asked us what we wanted to be when we grew up

I, 

Said a fairy.

I wanted to spread my wings, 

And, 

Touch the sky, 

I wanted to feel rainbows beneath my palms 

For droplets to drip down to my nose, 

To fly, 

And always know that I could come home, 

Later, 

When I lost the magic

And learned that rainbows didn’t touch the ground, 

That power wasn’t thrumming in my blood, 

I decided that that meant I would have to make enough money to

Buy some, 

I set my eyes to the horizon,

To the ends of the earth, 

I figured if I couldn’t have the sky then I would have the world, 

I said that I wanted to be a doctor

A lawyer, 

Pharmacist, 

Accountant, 

Professor, 

I wanted to do anything and everything so that

I would die with no regrets, 

That when the fairies came to get me I would have an, 

M.A, in human history, 

I would show them what an opportunity they had missed by not taking me, 

But then I was 13, 

And I understood that this 

Ritual like question that was always asked 

Wasn’t, 

About jobs, 

It was about, 

…surroundings…

What do you want to be when you grow up? 

I decided that I, 

Wanted to be safe 

I wanted to go to school, 

And not worry that somebody would mistake the, 

White floors for surrender signs, 

The pinpoint of a bullseye, 

A canvas that needed to be painted with the first dash of red

I, 

Wanted to go to school, 

And not have to take time off of geometry,

To, 

Learn how to calculate the best hiding spaces in a given area

I didn’t want to learn how to solve volume problems where, 

Kids had to figure out how many of us could squeeze into the space behind the bookshelf

…. I don't want to know how much blood it takes to cover the surface area of a school

When I was 14, 

The question came again

What do you want to be? 

I said, 

Cool 

I said, 

That I wanted to be so cold, 

That some of this frost left my body, 

And, 

Crystallized on the earth, 

I said, 

That I wanted the polar caps to stop melting, 

And companies to stop fuming, 

I wanted to construct the largest mask in the world, 

To, 

Keep the earth from choking on these toxic fumes, 

I wanted to build sandcastles at the beach, 

Not burial sites for the turtles, 

But through all my studies for that 

M.A. in human history, 

I've learned the pattern of profit over people, 

And,

I thought that millennial's would live for millennium, 

but people keep saying that it’s my generation’s problem now, 

These rising oceans and dying children, 

But your not dead yet, 

So why are you acting like it’s too late for you to do anything? 

Because I'm not ready to bear the weight of the world, 

I'm not Atlas, 

I didn't start your titan wars,  

They used to ask me what I wanted to be when I grow up, 

I said,

A fairy 

An astronaut 

A lawyer, 

A doctor, 

A physics teacher, 

I said, 

Safe 

I’m not any of these things yet, 

But, 

I’m also not an adult 

So maybe, 

One day, 

The fairies will still come and get me