Ladies and Gentlemen, we are surrounded:



We are surrounded by the very same people with whom we shared our Legos, our Barbies and Kens, our cheese and cracker snacks, our very first ungodly-pink lipsticks, our video games, our embarrassing first kiss stories...



And here we stand, many of us ONLY SIXTEEN YEARS OLD.



Only sixteen years of lessons learned and stories told.

Only sixteen years of experiences and mistakes.

Only sixteen years of literature and life.



And yet, as we stand with our companions alongside us, we are ALREADY surrounded by our very own sluts, whores, drop outs, crack dealers, meth and coke heads, baby mommas, day trippers, alcoholics, runaways, suicidals, anorexics, and bulimics.

WE ARE ALREADY the girls who give head on the weekends after a ten minute introduction because we can't find a reason NOT TO.

WE ARE ALREADY the drop outs who decided that we just didn't care about our education and decided our time could be better spent selling shit tax free for cash.

WE ARE ALREADY the parents of a brand new genetic copy of ourselves because we refused to use a condom in the back seat of a cadillac that one time, that one night, during that one summer.

WE ARE ALREADY the bloody-nosed no-good throw-aways who can't make it through the day without at least a couple white lines on the coffee table or a rock or two with our orange juice.

WE ARE ALREADY the blurry eyed dizzy bodies that stumble along the hallways bouncing off teens like a pinball game until somebody bumps us into our class room and faces spin until the bell rings at which point we try to figure out how the HELL we're getting home.

WE ARE ALREADY the restless hands and feet that itch for fridays just so we can pick up a bottle of OE and drown the sequence of events until we can't remember what happened in between the 3:01 bell and monday morning; our weekends become LIQUIFIED until there's no differentiation between sunrises and sunsets.

WE ARE ALREADY the angsty drama queens who can't handle having a bed time, or a less than satisfactory allowance, so we flee out of town, out of state, out of country, until everybody's asking, "Where the HELL did you GO?"

WE ARE ALREADY the bloody wrists and blackened eyes that sit in corners every day staring at the floor and writing our final good byes to the few people who "truly understood the pain".

WE ARE ALREADY the willowy limbs that could blow over in the wind because we refuse to allow our stomachs the time of day; all in the name of size zero jeans.

WE ARE ALREADY everything we promised ourselves we would never become.



WE ARE the tweakers in the back of the bus late at night.

WE ARE the passed out lumps on the corner of Stark and 3rd.

WE ARE the phone numbers scrawled in sharpie on the bathroom stalls "For a GOOD TIME".

WE ARE only using half of the brain cells we still have left, and dissolving the remains with saturday nights and summers.

WE ARE allowing our potentials to slip through our fingers like dry sand.



and yet-



WE ARE ONLY SIXTEEN







Anybody else concerned?









[The End]

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