Before I Turn 24 - poem
When you're 18, you are the bubbles in the champagne you can't drink yet, but you can sip, because you're almost of age.
At 19, the whole world is fully about you, and not only you, but your best friends, too, and a stage opens up for you each day the sun comes out.
At 20, you're either set or you're faded, there's no in between, not in this liminal age: no longer a teen, not quite yet in your twenties. It's fleeting.
When you turn 21, you embody the sun: the world is your moon, it revolves around your life, which revolves around you, the richness in the dry taste of the champagne that is no longer foreign, but suddenly, and somehow, still new. You are content.
When you are 22, you are entirely who you had no idea you would be, back when you were 18. You've been birdsong for so long that the sound of quiet surprises you.
When you are 23, you realize no one writes about being 23. You mourn your youth while it still surrounds you like a forest burning down in the middle of June.
I am almost 24. When I am asked what I want to do with the rest of my life, all I know how to say is "more."