Eighteen

Today is my birthday.

I’m finally eighteen,

But I don’t feel any different

With all the new freedom I have.

I watched as the cake came out,

With my name and my new age,

The candles flickered in the soft wind

And taunted me about growing up.

So I viciously blew them out, out of spite

Of the laughing all eighteen of them did.

I was asked what I wished for,

I kept it a secret and lied about it

In hopes that what I actually wished for

Could maybe, somehow, possibly become true.

I said I wished to grow as a person,

But really, I wished for the numbers to go down.

I never really felt connected with my youth.

I did always feel somewhat older in a way.

In my early teens, I begged to grow up,

Be free to do whatever feels like me,

Stay out late, Sleep all day, go wherever I wanted.

But now that I’ve got it and done it,

I have never felt so unfulfilled in life.

I wish to be a kid again but without all the problems.

I want to be carried to bed again

When I accidentally fall asleep on the couch,

Or in the car right before we arrive home.

I want to be taken everywhere with my parents

So I don’t waste the time I have with them.

I want to play on the streets til the lights come on,

And remember what it was like

Before it became a ghost town.

I want so much to have the time I had

Before I took it all for granted.

I want and I want and I want,

And what do I want?

I want to utterly feel what it was like

To be carefree and cradled again.

Being a kid, you feel like a god,

Worshipped and loved by everyone

With a petulant face and pure eyes.

My eyes once so full of life

Now just look at the empty candles

So dull and vacant like my soul will be,

Knowing my wish will never come true.