Nineteen.
Clueless and unprepared, I am diving headfirst
Into a world for non-nineteen-year-olds,
A system so precise and so imprecise that I cannot win
A universe so unpredictable that I was better off eighteen.
But now it’s time to reach out to destiny,
Blow out twenty candles (one for good luck)
And live life like everyone is watching.
Ideas and goals have been ingrained into my mind
Whether I like them or not does not matter,
As they’ve made homes in my skin but don’t pay the rent
And I cannot kick them out because we are symbioses
******* the poisonous vitals from each other’s bloodstreams.
Suddenly, it isn’t so insane to think that my success
Is not successful enough and that my wedding gown
Could be my clothes on someone’s floor late at night
And the future fades into never, not as a beautiful ripple
But as a vicious surge, and I realize that
Once upon a time is once upon a dream and
My dreams are nightmares and I scream
Through the night and I’m modestly nineteen
So no one else is responsible to wake me up.