This week I turn twenty
and nineteen is ready for the future,
nineteen doesn’t snap and growl anymore,
nineteen isn’t all struck matches
and lips like gasoline,
not all clenched teeth, clenched fists-  
closed heart and sharp tongue.
Seventeen and eighteen hold hands
because they need each other
to cope, and nineteen knows better
but it wasn’t enough
to shake off the nightmares.
Nineteen was the start of something
so much more than the sorry excuse
of seventeen, from which
sixteen still hasn’t recovered
and doesn’t want to talk about it anyway.
Sixteen missed her father
and eighteen couldn’t have cared less,
seventeen spent longer trying
to justify her emotions
than actually feeling them,
but nineteen was left with all that
bitterness and nothing
to sweeten the deal.
Twenty is ready for the next battle,
ready to pat nineteen on the shoulder
and offer her a place to rest,
twenty is the words “it’s safe now”
mumbled in an ear late at night
with arms around a lover.
Twenty is still purple, still violet, still violent-
there’s growing up still to do
but twenty is okay with that.