I Hope You Hear the Children Scream - Anjali Johnson

I hope you hear the children scream 

When posters turned protest signs drop 

From students who've rehearsed death  

The death of their childhood scars 

Them and their parents bow in shame 

I hope you hear the children 

I hope you hear the children scream 

When their bodies reject their spirits  

Drained by governments and grown men 

Mentally right in a wrong world  

Of pain and exuberance, injected 

With rhetoric of a hormonal congress  

I hope you hear the children scream 

I hope you hear the children scream 

When families accents change with 

Time apart in cells, camps, and death 

Of hope for their reunion 

Where childhood and ancestral wisdom blurs 

The vision of a starving baby on 

The fullest planet with the most pitiful 

Men who don't mourn them see it & to them 

I hope you hear the children scream 

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Anjali is a UAlbany sophomore and double major in Psychology and English. She loves to write in a variety of subjects and forms. She writes about how girlhood is defined across a lifetime, changes in our world, and what they mean for old and new generations. She uses writing as a tool that converts emotion into action in order to hold communities accountable.