WINNER OF THE POEMS TO YOUR FUTURE SELF COMPETITION!
Growing up is learning that there are the four seasons;
It is learning that life breathes in, and life breathes out,
That the Sun herself wakes and then sleeps,
That each leaf unfurls, and then withers,
That the clouds themselves dance on an empty canvas
If only for a delicately ephemeral moment.
Growing up is knowing that beauty is fitful also;
It is knowing that teeth form as beads of pearl, and fall indelibly decayed,
That skin crafted from silicone and porcelain is creased and tarnished by age,
That the hair once braided so intricately will fall limp and brittle,
That the brightest of eyes will be dulled by the dark fluctuation
Of both nature and fortune.
Growing up is grieving a newly unobtainable past;
To love and to lose those that one had the pleasure of knowing,
Those that one grows with, learns with, cries with-
It is the regret: the sickness of hindsight haunts us
And grief, sulking lugubriously, kills our pride and breeds doubt
That heaven itself is permanent.
Growing up is mourning the ‘better’ days;
Mourning those memories archived in an eternal library
Somewhere tucked away in the crevices of the mind:
Telling tales of laughter and smiles shared under a set sun,
Tales of hope and of loss, and of those beautiful feelings transcending time
Whose nostalgic enjoyment is swallowed by the fraying of memory.
Growing up is accepting
That stability is a curse.
-Eve Rann
