(Based on a true Wednesday morning)

Consuming a drug covered in whip cream and caramel
to keep me functional
cause I'm grinding away the last bits of my soul,
cause I rose at 7 am in hopes of catching my 7:29 train,
cause I chose to sacrifice my sleep for a little extra time to do as I please,
cause between adulthood, unnaturally ambitious goals, and 11 hours spent away from home working for a bureaucracy that's quickly realizing, after comparing my skill to my salary, 
that I was a steal (to put it humbly),
I decided I still needed just a little time
to breathe--

any reasonable child would think
something about this scene is a bit off, to say the least.
But unsurprisingly, the "grown" folk around me
front like this is an appropriate way to live.

Are you a zombie, a kid trapped in a grown-up's body, or a mix?
But "I make six figures," you say,
like those digits will mean something when you meet your last day,
as if your biweekly pay makes you any less of a slave--
may I suggest that your master isn't your higher ranked zombie supervisor,
but the very check for which you sweat,
to which you pray?

I can't even front like I, too, haven't succumbed to this abuse.
But I cannot stay here with you. 
A life that takes more energy than it gives
is a life stripped of truth.
And I was not given these precious seconds of life
to waste it
living a lie.

Cover Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash