Anthems of a Twenty-Something

I’m buying time with old habits, room so full of the past that I linger in it, in the grass like ants in honey, sticky with warm lethargy. Light eyes water in the superior light of suburbia- drowned in sunlight. The town hasn’t changed, just inevitable age, the old wear and tear, like graffiti and death, like the height markings on the slab of wall in-between the living room and kitchen, smudged lead on cream paint, it still smells like coffee and buttered toast, some kind of salient heaven.

Childish habits swallow me, like seven and seventeen, room bound, headphones loud, books and make believe, scribbling mix matched sentences on pages so clean it makes me sick, sick to the stomach that I’m inspired by the fear of being average, a pacing mess, fragile epiphanies that bite and turn sour before a single thing is written.

This is twenty something,

the conversion of trying to learn and unlearn lessons and memories, but this skin is made of inscriptions, perfume, clothes, places still red raw with nostalgia, a keep sake in my torso, the gentleness of gestures, I haven’t forgotten to call, kilometres away, it’s a gut feeling, a blister in the chest, but the streets are suddenly bare, no familiar names, just blank power polls, a dirty olive green of wasted devotion.

Dizzy with the prospect of getting older, in denial that I’m closer to fifty than the womb, but it’s okay sometimes because I still remember it all, but then again, sometimes it isn’t, because I remember it all.

I’m stuck between nowhere and everywhere, in transit, not quite belonging to anyplace or anyone. Perhaps that’s some kind of luxury, the choice to sit, to run. I admire running, not away, just temporary, evidently, the ticking and dragging of time, changing from one day to the next.

Far from perfect, both devil and saint, that retched battle between the self, damn it, I’m listening to the old poets, I’m more myself in the dark, more soul than body. Stretched out in the middle, blasting songs about going tenderly insane, precious words said with piano and guitar, writing the eulogy of tomorrow, that formidable silence in between melodies, divination slaps me hard into the night, and I almost forget to breath.

Desolate in wanderings half mad, like Alice, but like me, me, oh lord who is she! Morning make-up, the dog barks and the kettle is whistling, hot coffee and vitamin d, if we are lucky, groggy with red lips and cheeks, identity crisis in a blue hoodie zipped to my chest, a fresh haircut and a vison, just for today.

Repeat.