Why do I live in a world where

I am taught to trade away my childhood 

for future financial success? 

My fingers hold fast to my pencil, yet 

so easily I let dreams slip through 

the cracks between them.

When I am old and weary of life, 

what will I have to look back upon? 

What will I remember from my youth?

Will my only memory be at the kitchen counter, 

graphite smudged along my palm, bent over

papers littered with eraser shards 

and forgotten dreams?

Will I picture my younger self, 

to discover only a head bowed over books, 

buying a path ahead in life? I sigh, 

because I know this is what life 

demands from me. And so,

I pay in cookie dough 

left uneaten, unmade in the cupboards. 

I pay in green

frogs I will never catch. 

I pay in sand dollars

I will never collect along the beach, 

toes buried in the sand. 

I pay in duck bills

I will never treat to the crusts

and leftover crumbs of a sandwich. 

I pay in silver

shooting stars, left unnoticed 

upon a violet skyline. 

I pay in bread

I will never bake with my gran, 

our nails caked with flour. 

I pay in the currency 

of an unrealized childhood.

They tell me I must obsess 

over my ability to make

dough, green, dollars, and bills.

They teach me I must cry over

silver, bread, and currency. 

Do they not see the fine dinner before us? 

That all this is right here, within the gift of life? 

Half the time I would like to scream, as joy

is drained dry by our obsession with the comfort

we will one day achieve.

I feel as though I am the only one to notice, 

we learn the need to earn, to eat, to survive, 

while our soul is starved.

Our only solution to satiate our hunger 

lies within a dark truth: 

we pay for our future in memories.