We are the generation of the selfie and self-induced
sadness,
born in the same year the three of my idols would
commit suicide.
most poets die with the lights on,
but we all plan on drowning.
we are the generation of grounding lightning into
coffee beans of pulling strings from the hems of our
dresses until we unravel,
of leaving footprints in the gravel on the way to the
edge of the world. I am a computer girl,
and I was born in the year of the boar. Maybe
that’s why I’m a wh.ore,
and my best friends are all pigs,
and I dig my own grave every time I open my mouth.
We are the generation of meaningless trophies, it’s
true.
My parents like to tell me: “you
think that you deserve everything.” But we are a
generation of scraping,
watching our parents cry over housing prices
and dying white clothes black to blend in.
We are children of the wind, born to land wherever
freedom settles us and we take our parent’s debt
with us everywhere.
We are a generation of change and of chains, and
mostly
I think we deserve any fame we can get:
thirty people hitting “like” on a status.
Girls posting photos of themselves naked have
earned every moment of bliss
they receive from finding themselves beautiful in
their own skin.
We are a generation of women airbrushed to perfection
and daughters taking pills to feel pretty again.
And mostly, I don’t like to make sweeping
generalizations about my friends
but I think it’s okay
if at the end of some days we feel like relaxing,
taking a photo of our dinner,
telling two hundred near-strangers how lucky we
feel to be existing anywhere at all.”
the selfie generation; hannah beth ragland
Hale_Storm18