lately i’ve been missing
being nineteen
who i was before
i was anybody

(there’s a lot about it
i don’t miss
the anxiety
the conflict)

but i miss the
pink shimmer
around my eyes
the flowers
on my jacket
and in my hair
and the uncertain
hope i was hanging onto

that in five years
i would know
who i was and
what i was doing

but that’s not
how it works
it works more like
the tattoo on my ankle

(it's a bike
because my mother
always used to say
god will steer the
bicycle but not
until you peddle first

and that’s what i did
i kept peddling
but i’m not 100%
convinced any
divine guidance
led me to here)

if this is the
future for
the girl i was
at nineteen
then i'm not sure
about the future
of current me
at thirty

("sometimes i want
to quit it all
and become an
accountant now"
was a song
i played a lot then

because when i was
an artistic teenager
i thought numbers
might hold more
permanence than words
and it was funny
because me?
an accountant?

and then
guess what happened
i went and became
a ******* accountant)

i miss
who i was
before i realized
i'm never going
to have this
figured out

because i’m never
going to have this
figured out
and i get the feeling
that trying to figure
things out is about
to get a whole lot
more complicated

i miss being twenty one
and having no
******* clue
that i was about to be
tethered to a
liquor store

i walked in there
the other day
and the new guy
carded me
it hit me in a flood
what it felt like
to be a stranger
in my own town

what it meant that
the footprint i accidentally
left in the corner of the
municipal lot
on that hot sunny
summer day they were
laying blacktop
just got paved over

but i spent enough time
in his position not to be
the person that says
“you don’t know who
i am do you?”
he’ll find out soon enough

you know what
we always say
“i’d burn this
whole town down
if it weren’t
for my liquor store”

i’m not unhappy
as it stands
i’m worried
about what comes next

i’ve been doing less
soul searching and
more heart clenching
gut wrenching

and i’ll make a
pros and cons list
but it will just look
like this

win win
lose lose
win lose
lose win

the universe is playing
a giant prank on me
and i’m in limbo
trying to plan ahead