Twenty-Four

And like lovers do the sun on a day undeserving of an end,

Every year chases me to the end of a one way street

And I only get slower.

All the things I thought I knew

The shrewd little wisdoms of a growing little girl

Written under covers with a flashlight

In the last home my family shared

I rewrite my lessons by my apartment window.

Twenty-four caught me like a game of cat and mouse

And thirty isn’t far behind in my rear-view mirror

Still I feel no older than at sixteen, when I felt I knew it all,

Though the mirror now reflects my mom’s face back to me.

I waste away the last bit of my ‘good ol’ days’ 

Yearning for a season of life I’ve long grown out of.

A child in a bunk-bed

A shared room of three sisters under ten,

A woman who knows nothing at all.

My mother and I discuss the price of milk and butter

I still think of the way she’d colour inside the lines before I even knew how.

One day twenty-four will look young to me 

Booking off work for friends’ weddings 

Buying birthday gifts for their children

Maybe then I’ll be smarter.