I believed my mind to be a box of glass walls
the moon to be chasing my car at night
the roaring of the car wash to be a lion trapped in a den
I believed quicksand to be a much more prominent threat than it truly is
and that I would have surely caught fire at least a few times in my life at the rate Stop Drop and Roll were engraved into my brain
I thought by now I would have experienced peer pressure and that saying no to a drink or a smoke wouldn't have been this easy-- no one ever retorted
That by age eighteen I would be free from my parents rules and I would be living alone with a dozen animals  working my dream job
Or at least that I would be dead
That I would surely be dead