I’ve been swimming in a school of fish
Spent the last thirteen years growing gills,
always swimming in the same direction,
The name of the game is simply ‘keep up.’
I’m nineteen years old and I may not be the smartest fish in the sea,
but Ive always dreamed of the surface,
Envied the skipping stones who make ripples with their freedom.
Swimming in follow the leader formation isn’t easy when the the leader wants you to lose,
And it never could have prepared us
for the tsunami they called graduation, we ended up on land
And it turns out all along we needed lungs
Because the name of the game was ‘survive.’
Feel your scales cracking, gills gasping,
We were released without the skills we needed
Those who were here before us are willing to tax
Our lack of understanding,
demonstrating that if you pull a fish backward
His gills will fill with the water he has always trusted,
he will die.
They will serve him up, they call it Legal Sea Foods for a reason.
The rest of us are stranded,
Drying in the sand we used to dream of,
gasping for waves, looking to rely on the
very opportunities that betrayed us.
It’s almost as if theres a neon sign above us
A sign that reads ‘you are here.’
You are here and you cannot leave.
They taught you how to swim and how to follow
And fish don’t really sleep but they told you
Dream, Dream, Dream!
You are here and you cannot leave,
They told you you could walk
But they never taught you how to breathe.