there’s two forests that i’ve committed to memory.

one:
if i want to see the ghost of my seventeen year old self,
i’ll have to buy another bottle of citrus *****
and prepare my soft skin for mosquito bites
as i, drunk and free, roll around in the dirt,
still believing that my life has not yet begun.
i’ll **** behind bushes, with only hand sanitiser and leaves
to cover my body, like a modern-eve.
shivelight will sink onto my body,
my laughter conjuring up ageless forest-spirits.
my friends, also drunk and free, will make promises
that we’ll come back here one day,
that we’ll be like this forever;
we’ll never wrinkle and we’ll never age,
but our lives have not yet begun.

two:
i’ll consider myself wise beyond my years,
bu still young. still having the time
that i beg to be a virtue. still working out
where i want my line breaks to be
if i want to conjure percy shelley’s ghost
and change myself to fit a romantic ideal.
the only system i can break is to skip class
to skip stones into the river in the forest,
thinking of the girl i think i love, the girl i think i hate,
and all of the parts within myself that are mutable
and yet have not changed. i’m seventeen, and i have time.
i have time, and i don’t believe that i will ever run out of it,
even though each hour in this forest is spent
and will not return, i will convince myself
that i am merely solidifying a bank of nostalgia
that will make me smile one day.

i am crying, now.
i will **** myself when i get my first grey hair.