I Wear A Quilt

As an early twenty-something, I struggle daily to balance enjoying my youth and comprehending responsibility. Inevitably we all mourn the loss of our innocence - this poem describes normalizing that.

Lucy said, write about feeling old, but not being old.
I kick off my walking shoes and sit down with a pen.

It feels like 

wearing two pairs of socks in June.
It feels like looking out over your shiny ocean, markedly apprehensive,
you watch your Walrus and your Carpenter beckon you forth to eat.
It feels like surveying a map of your spacetime
and seeing your sixyearsold shame break bread with your fortyyearsold fear
and inevitably you are paralyzed here,

in the present.

It feels like 

wearing a backpack filled with stones
little laughter pebbles falling to the bottom through the cracks of the heart break rocks bundled
worn smooth from nervous touchings
and the time-distorts;
and your mother saying, Sweetie, hi. 
Your father asking, can I carry it up the stairs for you?

It feels like knowing it will all still be waiting upstairs after dinner no matter how much you eat this time, the backpack heavy-sad.

It feels like wanting to shed that itchy itchy skin already but it just hasn't finished growing all the way.

It feels like seeing your face in photos of your mother from back when.
It feels like seeing your face in photos of your mother not yet taken,
it feels like always eating leftovers microwaved too long.

It feels like the globe spinning, clock-rounds, dilation - slow
a fruitless push against the head wind;
A glance at your wrist and into the air.

Reviews

[Katie Foutz Voss]

This... was incredible. I haven't loved a poem like this in a while. There are a million poets on the internet and 999,000 of them are stupid and can't write. (Unfortunately, those 999,000 write twice as much as the 1000 intelligent poets.) What I'm trying to say, is that even if this piece hadn't been incredible, I would still appreciate it. Your words are as real as they come. The syntax and the repetitions are all perfectly voiced, perfectly placed. After my first read-through I wanted to do a little dance, but it IS very late and I should not be awake reading. Needless to say, thank you for writing this. I look forward to reading more.