decade dedication
whenever someone asks me for my age
it takes me a moment to respond
because sometimes I forget which answer is correct
aren't i still six?
my memories are narrative
i don't know if it's the norm
they're stories held by someone else
passed along the chain within my brain
and yet I know that I was there
I remember it in sequence
just not staring out my own eyes
more like watching from the eaves
knowing logically and feeling memories
are not, evidently, the same thing
sometimes i forget how old i am
because i have felt too much
for only twenty-four years to hold
- see, there I go again!
because I am still twenty-three.
but even so I forget.
I have told it wrong for months.
truly, by accident.
how can twenty-three years
contain all that I have lived
it cannot hold in the pain
nor the memories
no matter how I know them
no matter how I hold them
my brain says 'twenty-four'
as though the extra months
will stretch it all out
lighten up the load
as if maybe knowing this May
could mark the start of twenty-five
might help me survive
under the crushing weight
of a life that should be stretched
much, much, further,
'cross many more years
but, no. reality is it's just my
twenty-three to bear the burden
though they seem too weak
to many, even often so to me
would it thin out more
if I felt as though I were twenty-nine?
I know not. but I am not, and so
I should not speculate.
and really, this is my 24th year on this planet
my birthday only marks the conclusion of it.
but sometimes when
they ask how old I am and
I have to stop and think
I hesitate because I wonder
why they want to know.
is it so that they can judge my years,
casually decide upon the value
of my experiences, my words?
it feels that way, sometimes
even when they do not mean for it to.
i am twenty-three, I want to scream,
i am twenty-three, but my twenty-three
matches your thirty-five.
and my twenty-three matches *your* forty-nine.
and if this is all
stuffed into my twenty-three
and so many others
with so much less
and so many more years
did not make it,
or they sit here just like I do now,
then how am I to know
that i could one day be okay?
it is easy to forget what it is like
to be nineteen, to be twenty, twenty-one
or to be age twenty-two.
i wish i could remind you
but those years for me
have not been what
everyone else's seem to be
so i sit quietly and listen
to your forty-two
and your sixty-seven
your thirty-six
and your fifty-four
and you are all in pain
and your pain is real
and you are valid and seen
but i cannot help but wonder.
and when I step out for a moment
to refill my water bottle
please know that this is code
for crying in a bathroom stall
because i am scared. and i am young. and no one can tell me
what the future will be
so don't you dare say
that i will be ok.
you don't know that.
we are in the same place,
only i got here far too soon
for anyone to say what is next.
let me cry. let me scream. let me be.
I know I am kind,
I make people laugh
they call me gracious and patient
the delightful perfect patient
who takes it all in step
and has it all in hand
but i confess it all pretend;
and i do not know how
no one else has noticed yet.
of course i'm not okay.
I know I should be brave.
but I think people forget
that i am twenty-three.