The Things They Don't Tell You

Recently, I have been struck by this change

There are things they don’t tell you about getting older,
how one day you will realize
that the home you grew up in 
no longer feels like home
and you’ll be yearning for somewhere else
even as you are sleeping in the bed
that you slept in as a teen,
these changes come slowly, 
but hit you all at once. 
They do not tell you
that you will look the same
as you did last year
and last week
but you will feel like the world
shifted a few inches overnight
not telling you that it was going to do so, 
but leaving you to pick up the pieces
of the memories it left as it moved,
you will grow to understand
that some things will never make sense
no matter how much you shake your fist at God
and cry into your mother's shoulder, 
they do not tell you that you will not always be able
to cry into your mother's shoulder
or call your dad when your car breaks down
or feel comfortable in the places
that used to make your eyelids relax
into peaceful sleep,
they are too busy learning these things themselves
that they forget to tell you the things
you wish you knew
before it was too late.

Reviews

[John the Baptist]

Who is "they?" Why were they supposed to tell you these things?

[Ally Ann]

It's interesting that you ask this question, as I was thinking about the same thing as I was writing this poem. "They" could be anyone, depending on how the reader interprets it. "They" are the people, or even institutions, that we counted on to prepare us for the future and warn us about what is to come as we grow older and go through life's trials. "They" are the people that we look at and think have their life together and have all the answers and can guide us through the things we don't understand. It could be people in general or specific people that are specific to the reader. It is vague because it is what the reader makes it, because "They" varies from person to person.

[Movielum Biloarso]

This is an interesting poem: each line is a complete thought, as if you had collected emotioreasonable observations and then effectively connected them simply by lining them up in the right order. I'm sure there was far more and different craft to your writing this poem than I've described, but how you wrote this is one of my favourite approaches to free verse.

As an older guy whose mother passed on in 2011, at age 69, I was particularly hit by the effective parallelism of the two lines about crying on your father's shoulder. My own father is 80 now, and all too soon he won't be around. The thought hurts. Thanks for expressing the emotion associated with that thought so effectively.

[Ally Ann]

I really appreciate your thoughts and kind words about this poem! Sometimes I have all these thoughts that seem connected and work well together and somehow just spill out into a poem, and thats pretty much what happened here. When I'm feeling intense emotions, they come out like this. While I'm still pretty young and hopefully have a lot of time left with my parents, I have begun to notice the relationships with their parents and how they are transitioning and seeing that was a big inspiration for this poem (and even though I expect many more years with my parents, I have to accept that I have no control over whether that happens). Thank you for taking the time to comment!