too young to be this old | poem

25 Mar, 2025

they say i am childish,
twisting my keychains between my fingers,
letting the charms clink like
wind chimes in restless hands,
filling my pockets with crumpled receipts
from bookstores and cafés,
proof that i exist outside of hospital walls,
vanishing on weekends into the arms
of a boy who holds me like
i am something soft,
something beautiful,
like i am not just a girl made of
scar tissue and silence.

they say i should talk about studies,
careers, retirement plans, degrees,
map out my life in bullet points
and five-year plans,
speak in the language of ambition,
of security,
but my mouth is tired of tomorrow.
i did not think i would live long enough
to worry about tax brackets or promotions —
a future i never believed would be mine to see.

at eleven, i slept in rooms
with walls the colour of bone,
nurses with voices like expired lullabies
asking me what i wanted to be
when i grew up.
i did not tell them
that i was only trying to be alive.
that my days smelled like antiseptic and iron,
that my wrists bloomed in red ribbons,
that my body was a house
with boarded-up windows,
a place i had never wanted
to call home.

at thirteen, i knew how to read
the numbers of a heart monitor,
how to silence the screaming of machines,
how to measure time by the pills
they handed me with water in plastic cups.
i answered their questions like i had rehearsed,
told them what they wanted to hear:
yes, i want to go to college.
yes, i want to be something.
yes, i see a future.
but i was lying.
i was only seeing my mother
in the hallway, her hands wrung raw,
her eyes stitched shut with worry,
her body curled in the plastic chair
of another waiting room.

at fifteen, i was learning
how to breathe again,
how to shape words without approval,
how to hold a fork and a knife
without trembling, without a chart
reducing my hunger to numbers.
they handed me papers, asked me to sign:
where do you see yourself in ten years?
but i only saw the hospital lights,
saw my name on reports,
saw a girl in my reflection
who had been emptied out
and stitched back together
too many times to still be a child.

and when my friends huddled together,
flipping through glossy magazines,
their laughter bubbling like soda fizz,
spilling over like champagne in glittering glasses,
pressing phones into each other’s palms,
voices overlapping, eyes sparkling like
sequins under soft-lit vanity mirrors,
to show the newest makeup trend,
the lipstick shade that everyone swore by,
the blush that promised to make you
look like you’d been kissed.

and i sat quiet, hands curled in my sleeves,
watching girlhood through a glass window
i could not open. could not break.

i did not know the lyrics to their songs.
did not know the names they whispered
between giggles and secrets.
i did not know how to be light,
how to fill my mouth with things
that would not rot me from the inside out.
when they spoke of their celebrity crushes,
i spoke of the nurse down the hall
who had to cut a girl loose from her own belt.
when they painted their lips strawberry red,
i spoke of the taste of chalky white pills.
when they asked who i wanted to be,
i only wanted to be someone else.

and they noticed.
they noticed the way
my presence made the room colder.
how i did not fit into their golden-lit world,
how i carried shadows in my hands
like they were souvenirs.
they stopped asking me questions.
stopped waiting for me to laugh.
i was something distant. something else.
watching girlhood like a silent film,
pressing my hands against the glass.
because my world was cold linoleum floors,
half-empty iv bags,
adults with clipboards tilting their heads,
saying i was “so mature for my age".
too young to be this old.
too old to still be waiting
for girlhood to find me.

and now —
now that i can finally
reach for the things i lost,
now that i can love like i am not
on borrowed time,
now that i can paint my nails
the color of rose petals,
buy perfume with glitter in it
just to watch it catch the light,
dance barefoot in grocery store aisles,
spinning between shelves like a girl
who never learned restraint,
now that i can ignore responsibilities
to press my cheek to my boyfriend’s shoulder,
trace lazy constellations on his skin,
let his warmth remind me that
i am here, that i am real,
now that i can spend my money
on useless, pretty things —
rings shaped like moons and butterflies,
earrings that dangle like tiny galaxies,
stickers and notebooks i will never use
but need to own —
they tell me it’s too late.

that i am childish.
that i should think ahead,
trace my life in careful lines,
not waste my time on love and poetry,
on sugar-sweet moments that dissolve
too quickly on the tongue,
on things too fleeting, too fragile,
too beautiful to last.

but i have spent too long
in the mouths of machines,
my body reduced to a string of symptoms,
a thing studied, treated, and pitied.
my future was never mine to hold —
it was written in prognosis reports,
whispered between doctors who never
asked me what i really wanted.
i have buried enough versions of myself
to know that every breath
i take now is a resurrection,
every laugh is defiance,
every moment i let myself
be happy is a reclamation.

so i let myself be ridiculous.
i let myself be soft.
i let myself dream, and want, and take.
i press colorful stickers onto my notebooks,
as if each one is a bandage over the past,
as if i am rewriting history
in small, glittering pieces.
i take pictures of the sky,
knowing the clouds will slip
through my fingers like all transient things,
but still, i try to trap them in my lens,
to prove i was here
when the light hit just right.
i eat ice cream at midnight,
letting the cold bite my tongue,
a shock, a sweetness, a thing i take
without permission,
as if i have never been told no.

i kiss until i am dizzy,
until i forget what it means
to brace for impact,
until the world is only warmth
and breath and the reckless belief
that this moment is mine.
i run my fingers through the air
as if it were silk,
as if i could gather time in my palms,
as if i could hold onto now forever.

now i am in my twenties,
and i am choosing.
i am choosing happiness like a rebellion,
choosing softness like a war won,
choosing love like it will last forever,
even if it won’t,
even if nothing does,
even if that’s the point.

and if that makes me immature,
if that makes me foolish,
then let me be young forever.