The Boy Who Sold Tomorrow

Corner-store light on a wet road

Do not sell tomorrow
For a phone flash today
Gold can clap in a borrowed car
Then come collect your name

Don't be the boy who sold tomorrow (don't sell tomorrow)
The future has a quiet price (always comes due)

Tari had math in the margins, dreams in a cracked screen
Mama on night shift, badge hanging by the kettle steam
Little sister's school shoes split open at the seam
He wore one borrowed blazer to the youth-hall pitch meeting
Said, "Give me six months, I'll turn this dust into bricks"
Folder called Tomorrow full of logos and bright graphs
Auntie put her pension in an envelope soft
Said, "Baby, don't forget us when the plane takes off"
He kissed her cheek, felt the paper in his palm
And called the weight ambition so it wouldn't sound wrong
First month looked holy, crisp notes in a band
Selfies by a car he never owned, handshakes at the barber stand

First lie buzzed on his phone
Second lie wore cologne
By the third, the kitchen door
Didn't sound like home

Do not sell tomorrow
For a phone flash today
Gold can clap in a borrowed car
Then come collect your name

Don't be the boy who sold tomorrow (don't sell tomorrow)
The future has a quiet price (always comes due)

But the product never shipped, the office was a back room
Two laptops, one fan, and the rent due past noon
Kuda sold his taxi for a share he couldn't see
Miss Jean gave church coins, said the Lord would set him free
Then the gala by the highway, Tari holding the mic
Said, "We changed the city," while his phone shook all night
Fifty missed calls and one text from his mother
"People at the door, son, what did you do to others?"
His sister in the rain with her shoes still split
Holding Auntie's envelope, empty where the truth fit
He won the room, lost the road back through it
Learned a dream can rot when your soul won't do it

Ambition is a fire, but it needs a clean room
Or it eats what you love and calls the ashes bloom
A logo isn't bread when the fridge stays bare
The first true thing he said was, "I don't have it there"

Do not sell tomorrow
For a phone flash today
Gold can clap in a borrowed car
Then come collect your name
Don't be the boy who sold tomorrow (don't sell tomorrow)
For Mama's hands, for school shoes split (don't sell tomorrow)

Morning found him at the bus stop, phone dead, clock loud
Only names on a folded list, and the long walk of paying down