Conkers

Horse chestnuts and long sticks scattered around where children ,balancing along a wall had tried their best to bring the conkers down, since it was not yet time for them to fall. Some shells were slightly open, and inside lay nuts that caught the sun, a gleaming white, impatient kids using their thumbnails prised the shell apart to find a fruit unripe. These youngsters grow old way before their time, exposed to influence beyond their years, not maturing slowly to reach their prime their childish minds burdened with adult fears. Depression, self-harm and anxiety, from images of perfection instilled by social media and on the TV fast forward through their childhoods, unfulfilled. How many with sad futures? Who can tell, unripened lives lived in their broken shells.