EIGHTEEN

Last month, I turned eighteen
and it was different.
‘You’re not even going to feel it’.
But dear fellow,I did.
It felt I was seated in a waterfall;
flowing with an adrenaline rush,
gurgling with energy,
boasting of arrival
but
what now?
which way ahead?
whom to follow?-
these questions, entangled with
the deceitful mist,
were floating ahead,unanswered.

In the beginning
it was so dark,
I wailed and longed for
the sweet days of sixteen-
dreamy,fragrant and carefree,
now,that seemed so easy
and this life,
it was squeezing me,
extracting all my strength
like a lemon and leaving me
to dry out in the Sun.

The Sun, a reminder;
I don’t have it figured out,
I don’t know what to do,
I don’t find what my heart wants
while others beam in the sunshine
of what they’d become,
of the choices they’d made,
of the places they’d been to.
All of this stung
worse than a bee
but there wasn’t any blood,
only tears of self-pity.

There were too many ‘I can’t(s)
when I saw an ‘I can‘.
Over the horizon,
it sat gleaming
as if prying for attention.
I drew closer and seemed like an affair in making-
confidence invigorating the soul
like glitter on the ocean floor.

And now,it has kind of dawned.
Life,alternated by better and bitter tastes,
will keep striking
but only if we hold those
hurdles like marshmallows
over the cups of coffee
we happily sip from,
we might manage to
smile,laugh and shine
like ourselves
because
turning eighteen isn’t about
being an adult,
it’s more about ourselves;
the deep understanding
of the decisions we make.
Turning eighteen is
getting married to ourselves
for a lifetime.