When you were young, what did you think your life would be?
When I close my eyes, I can still see every detail
But I never saw people
I wrote myself off as
Unattached
Never really here, always trying to be there
You’d be surprised
How easy it is to turn off emotion
If you practice

Now I find the clichés about life to be true
Something about constant change
My grandmother singing
“People, people who need people”
Somewhere in the back of my head
Perhaps it’s a mature stance
To value people over things and ideas

Maybe I was just wrong
Or I’m losing my edge
It’s surprising how much it hurts to turn emotion on
To let myself care
But the things I never concerned myself with
Have a strange new importance
My softer, duller edges seem to be screaming something I used to be unable to hear
And for the first time
I understand