Growing Pains

Adulthood is slippery.

It doesn’t have 1, 2, 3.

I feel like a child more than I ever have before.

Is everyone else understanding these half-formed representations

of my future?

The numbers are clearly marked-a number to say how much

stuff I can keep in me and tell you.

But can we have numbers-linear processes please?

Numbers outside of cinder block walls?

I’m just ring to et there, and I don’t know what the words mean

that are telling me how.

I’m terrified for the day that I’m not gonna know

and something terrible is gonna happen.

Enlightenment shouldn’t be this ambiguous...I’ve never don’t this before.

Can you send help to help me get it?

I can wade my way througha lot of things…my young life

is riddled with battle scars.

Real, hard, confusing.

But this? This is where I say

                                    I know confusing and this doesn’t have to be it.

Please don’t laugh. Please don’t criticsize. Please don’t

tell me I should part the fog with my untrained eyes. Please don’t

make me smaller by showing me how it's done.

                                                I’m still learning life.

                        Can’t you see? This is what I’ve been bad at

                        all along.

Please be gentle. Please show me the new way of counting

I have to learn but show me with love.

Leaving childhood is supposed to be empowering

I feel it a thing that must be endured for the sake

of keeping up with myself.

Their tears roll down with the sugar still on their lips.

This natural reaction has not been trained out of me,

and is proving a difficulty.

I want forever to belong to the wild grass with its sweet yellow

and the sky that is my home.

Spring 2013