Old Soul, or Never Child

Is it really too brash to say that someone who acts with an 'old soul' is someone who may have never been a child.

They may have grown up being the adult, where their parent had lacked to inspire,

Creativity in the mind, childish play and things that you would expect of most adolescents.

Innocent words.

'Old Soul.'

Yet the twist on the why behind them might be a little more sinister.

Was she the girl who signed leases for homes she bartered to rent at sixteen?

Was she the therapist to men older than her by twenty years?

Hard to say, but she was treated with little regard.

Come to when useful, but left with little companionship to match her 'old soul' as some might say.

It's almost similar to the concept of brains and agony.

The smarter you are, the more bleak life can look.

Broken in the ways you must navigate it,

And disheartening in the way that those of less qualified means to manage their assets and future.

We 'old souls' cannot be the purveyors of all that we touch,

but we can be old. Old like the men and women of 1920s, but sick with depression and loneliness like they were when they came to find everyone they knew and loved had long passed.

Are we really old?

Is our soul old?

Or is our heart tired.

Battered and beaten,

Hardened to the ways life twists and leaves its imprints.

Mark me when I look up to the people who call me an 'old soul' anymore,

and I tiredly remark "I know," to them.

Because they know that I know too, the weight that comes with it.