At fifteen, the reaper came, silent in the night,
Stealing me from youth's warm, calming delight.
****** into a world where heartbreak resides,
Where innocence withers and hope slowly dies.

No more laughter, just echoes of pain,
Sorrow's lament, a relentless refrain.
Gone are the dreams that once danced in our sight,
Replaced by storm clouds, obscuring the light.

Now, I linger by your grave,
With flowers wilted, their colors all grey.
I mourn the loss of innocence, the childhood's decay,
In the quiet, I kneel, with so much left to say.

Grief marks the end of youth, a bitter pill to swallow,
and builds a home for loneliness to wallow.

the road to hell is paved with good intentions
when do i begin to forgive myself from those i have done wrong
was i a blind youth or am i truly evil
i can only blame myself but i've only followed teen impulses
my heart is not my brain but when do i get to claim separation

can i blame it on my youth or is my youth blamed on me

When I was a child,
Watching a wayward world through a lens of wonder and possibility,
Bound to an unusual captor of bats and gloves,
Reaching towards the rest of my life,
Over the head of the life I was already living,
I fell in love.
Not with a person or an object,
Nothing but a symbol of everlasting youth.
A team,
A place,
A game,
It was baseball.
Not just the game but everything that accompanied it,
A family,
Brothers becoming brothers.
A world,
The smells of trees and rain and concession stand hotdogs,
The sounds of a ball thudding into a catcher’s mitt and cheering fans,
The tastes of early morning Starbucks and corn nuts and bubble gum,
All of it stuck between basepaths,
Sitting on a bench in a dugout,
Spilled on the seats of my father’s car.

All of these little things,
All of the memories,
Just moments passed,
Lost in the depths of my mind,
Taunting me as I wish to return to them.
Although not yet old, I am older,
Reminiscing on the good and the bad of my youth.
I can still remember the veil of paralyzing loneliness,
Pierced by the family found in my brother’s team.
I remember the tears shed as I watched my father devoting his life to that team.
Those bad times were outshined by the good,
Team dinners in faraway towns,
Sunsets over outfield scoreboards,
Driving back to hotels in the dark with the windows down and classic rock blaring.
This is the way that I grew up,
Lonely but free,
Unhappy but secure,
In love with a thing that took so much from me,
Lasting Stockholm Syndrome bleeding from my life as it was to the life that I have.
I have lost this love,
No longer experience the ups and downs that can only be described as the reality of life.
I cannot weep over this lost love,
Cannot wallow,
Knowing that this is how it must be.
I must let go,
Grow up,
Get old,
Move on away from the family I found and the world I discovered,
Life doesn’t slow until it stops,
Barreling towards a hollow canyon,
Disappearing over a cliff to be covered by fistfuls of dirt,
Watered by the tears of loved ones left behind.
I must leave my love to rest before I lay in that hollow canyon.

Why must we grow up?
Grow out of our innocence and naivety, careless inexperience?
Why must we take for granted the memories of our youth?
Where do we retrieve them when our age returns to us and we miss the forgotten beauty of the world through a child’s eyes?
I wish the softness of the summer breeze would return to me,
Find me again in my days of regret,
In the sea of sorrow following me from my youth,
Sending waves crashing over my head.
I am not yet old, not yet wise,
But still, I mourn the loss of days past,
Loss of sweet summer softness,
Of the relentless rain ruining the chances I had of forgiving my father.

I have forgiven him since.
I forgave him like I forgave myself,
Regretfully.
I often miss that swirling storm of emotions I felt,
The loneliness, the worthlessness, the heart sickness.
So young and so filled with pain, balanced only by the Children of the Sun radiating from my chest.
Views of the maple-*******, the leather-launcher, the grenade-catcher,
Smells of earth and freedom,
Sounds of gentle violence, drawn-out intellectualism,
Overwhelming my senses and filling my days.
Those memories will follow me into the reaper’s grasp,
Rest with me in my eternal cradle.
Despite the storm, the pain, the sickness,
I dream of that cradle where the memories, the bitter and the sweet, will come together in the storm,
Meet like lightning and thunder,
And follow me into peace.
I am not yet old, but I long to be,
To once again feel my love and its infinite reach.

You watch time pass by
Seeing your friends getting married, having kids, and owning homes
While you sit in your childhood room cheering them on
As you envy them because you want to be there.

You look around at your childhood room trying to make it feel more you
All you are doing is avoiding the issue at
But you're scared
Scared of stepping out into the world.

You try changing your style from the emo phase to the boho kings/queens
Spending all your money to see what calls your name the most
Questioning everything you wear
You cry looking at the little white dress you're wearing
Wishing it was the dress that was saying the words 'I Do.'

Hoping that the feeling of insecurities leave your body
It doesn't
Not until you are ready to step out into the world
Until then you cry while you wear a little white dress.

my mother shoved words into my mouth
she fed me whenever i cried
and as the obedient kid that i was,
i learned to nibble on every word
and swallowed them as i should.
now that i'm older,
my stomach has ran acid
ーit burns my chest and i would still feel them
foam inside my mouth as if
every word were told just yesterday.
how can i truly love my mother
if she couldn't feed me
when i was hungry for something else?
i cried again with my heart wide open
as my knees wobble in fear
of how exposed i was in front of her.
but this time,
i guess she couldn't hear me enough.
it was silentーshe couldn't feed me anything,
for not a single word left her mouth.
she watched me intently
as i detach the cord from both of our bodies.
     i wasn't the daughter she loved anymore,
     but she was still the mother i loved.