They say poets die young,
but we never got the chance to live.
They shut us up,
tore the pages
before we could even write them.

They said we felt too much.
Too soft.
Too loud.
Too weird.
So they called it weakness,
and they crushed it.

They didn’t wait for time to take us—
they killed us early
with silence,
with laughter,
with rules
we didn’t make.

They say poets die young.
No.
We were killed.