Twenty-three and coming from my teens
I’ve developed along already categorized genes,
By those who think they know me,
When I’m only twenty-three with a molding mentality

I was once vicariously raised through parentally guided means
Socially slit by those that promised me prosperity if I was studious,

Taught the importance of individuality,
Yet forced to be obedient
Then indoctrinated with an educator’s prescription,
An addiction they picked up in a higher institution

I’m finding it hard to follow your lead, when you found nourishment in my youthful innocence,

Socially stitched through generationally fostered fixes
Notions that you could promise me providence,
I’ve been cradled in a crib riddled with termites

Time shows little sympathy for those who have yet to comprehend the promise of a six foot end,

Yet you trained me to believe you didn’t domesticate me
Despite being conceived in a place I was not well received,
You taught the importance of obedience
Yet I’m finding it hard to accept your ancestral credence,

When this place has been passed along bloodlines,
When my generationally guided grandparents' felt the final close of their eyes,
And left me a world pieced together by both atrocities and glimpses of humanity

I’m finding it hard to speak in a world with such narcissistic sympathies of the traditionally raised

Yet I’m socially sutured by the fact that I still breathe,
While being born in a place that once found stability through a slave trade,
A middle passage that led to a devious democracy
I’m so grateful we can mend what barbarians once began,

I’ve had time to age, enough to take the reins,

Though before we build our shrines of this age,
You can still pray for something beyond the grave,
Yet never forget how we've been stranded, left here to continue, or to fray,
To humanize a species that earth derived,
Or to let the braids of life untwine and give way,  
During our generations' stay.