One Hundred Thousand

Sixty Thousand.

I can feel it mounting and rising

No, not the pressure or the stakes

It’s all in the prices

It will haunt me throughout my days:

Sixty Thousand in loans I will have to pay.

Seventy Thousand.

Inflation of the higher education

Year after year with no end in sight

The cost will just grow until my own pay this price

To get the education they deserve at the cost of their life:

Seventy Thousand in loans I will have to pay.

Eighty Thousand.

My family can’t help me

Neither can his or hers or theirs

We left home to make them proud

But now they question our decisions:

Eighty Thousand in loans I will have to pay.

Ninety Thousand.

The vicious circle of subsidies will never end

It makes tuition soar until we can’t see the top

Supply and demand is simple

But this issue is not that:

Ninety Thousand in loans I will have to pay.

One Hundred Thousand.

A roof over my head and food in my stomach

A job to maintain this is what I was promised

Expenses will pile up, priorities will change

And my story will remain just one out of millions.

And all this time I will never not think

Of the One Hundred Thousand in loans I will have to pay.

The author is a 16-year-old student in Panorama City.

Read more: Opinion poetry by Times readers