Teenager's Hymn

20.

I believe that everyone was the way we are at some point or another; ponderous, inclined to disaster. Some of us were even lucky enough (if luck had anything to do with it, which I sometimes doubt), or bright enough, or clever enough to scoot around even the outskirts of the system, abridging what, to any adult, was meant to be a long and winding tale of slow destruction, and instead building greatness and glory out of danger. We didn't fear the cops because we were the cops: we governed ourselves as strictly and as diligently as any assemblage of persons would, eyeing headlights and pissing behind bushes. We were ultimate: the feared by-product of a vague and distant future that hung low over the heads of anyone growing up, one year at a time. They were afraid of what they knew to be brute force and, as is it in any society, they retaliated with an equal and opposing brute force: the kind that came in cuffs and glare, and not the kind they sold in baggies and six-packs. It was disappointing, to say the very least.

The problem is that, to eliminate our kind would surely put a stopper on man: we are the in-between place, and we have no foreseeable quittance. We are what exists between diapers and deadlines. We are not the black, the Jew, the woman: we cannot be eliminated, because we are so… so vital, and yet so destructive. We are not a unified entity though, I should note; I distinguish us from races and genders and other persuasions because we are not, like the aforementioned, a mass, or a hive. I use "we" for the sake of simplicity but, in actuality, what we are is little more than a massive assortment of particles, that serve to form absolutely nothing. It just is what it is: it isn't there to be questioned or analyzed, because to do so would ultimately result in confusion.

Soon, I won't be part of the "we"; I'm making my exit, now, and by this time next year I'll be part of a whole new "they." And They hold themselves to a higher standard than We do.

Reviews

[Raven Starhawk]

A delicate treasure held high above a stream of brilliance. I cannot help but regard this piece with great admiration. Your way with words has me enchanted as well as focused on every well woven detail.