Aging Population - Hunter Bishop

You salt the steak,
cigarette between your fingers,
holding it in “the proper way,”
the way that makes you feel in control
while your one crutch burns into nothing.
Ash trickles down onto your food,
but who cares about taste
when your tongue has been rotting away
for hundreds of years?

We’ll all laugh when you’re gone,
saying the old ways are done.
Now that we’re in charge, things will be different.

Surely,
nobody knows how to run the world
better than we do.

Surely,
nobody knows how to tear ourselves apart
faster than we can.
Hunter is a junior at Houghton High School.

The editors liked this piece's sense of tension and the stark twist at its conclusion. Hunter is also the author of two other poems in this issue: "Coffee" and "West Coast Wishing."