This was unexpected
A sudden break between acts
The stage goes dark
The curtain falls
And nobody knows when it will rise again

And so our show continues
With essays to be written
Forms to fill out
Applications to be submitted
Letters to be written
All while you try to balance other things—
Homework,
A social life,
Sleep
From now on
We get no time for those

The lights come up
I wish there was really an intermission
A time where I could just sit
Relax
Reflect on what just happened
But life takes no breaks
Just as quickly as they appeared
The light gets snuffed
The curtain rises
And the rest remains to be seen

You have taken the first hit
Gotten your first high
Leaving you wanting more when life beats you
You want more, but can’t get any
You wish that when people asked you about their lives
You knew how to help
Life just seems to keep you down
Shattering you

Someone sees through our mask
And so we reveal everything to them
Only with them are you yourself
Only with them do you let them see underneath
But once they see, they leave
Until another takes their place
Rinse and repeat

We know who we are
We have a filter around family
Cutting out the curses and the ***** jokes
We have facades for our different groups
We put it on like a costume
Covering our feelings
Covering our emotions
Changing who we are
We only realize we had it on when we take it off
By then it’s too late
It’s become us

We have grown
We develop tastes and opinions
We have an imagination that can get us into trouble
We still don’t need a filter though
We don’t know why we would

We say what comes to mind
No filter for our thoughts
But we don’t need one
We haven’t yet discovered who we are
We discover our feet
Our hands
Our mouth
Our tongue
We discover how to walk
To talk
To ride a bike
We have no sense of urgency
The hardest pain may be when we fall
May be when someone leaves
May be when someone dies
But we always got back up
We always filled the gap the person left
We always recovered