Collection of Poem Things

18

I turned 18 on February second. On the first my mom kept saying, "enjoy your last day as a kid" while I hid the fact that although I was nervous, I was also excited to be an adult.

A week after I turned 18 I took my younger sister, who is 16, to see an R rated movie. No biggie, I thought. I'm an adult, and even when I was 17 my sister and I had seen R rated movies with my little brother. But as we went to buy tickets I found that in order to get my sister in I had to be 21.

This was the moment that things began to become undone, because although I had won the battle and overcome the dragon named kid, that didn't mean I was rid of the rules that held me.

I found that as the confines of childhood fell, I felt the pressure of adulthood pile in.

I am an adult.

I am no longer a child. And you may have expected some type of power to fall over me, but it didn't. I reality, I soon realized that 18 wasn't all that important. That the stamp "adult" didn't mean nearly as much to me as the stamp "driver".

Sure I can pierce my body with wire, or ink it with obscenity, but what matters most to me is that the serenity I expected, the freedom I hoped for was a lie. So I'll try hard to remember the good, but after undoing the hood of 18, I've found its face to be one all too familiar.

A face of a childlike quality, simply masked by piercings, tattoos, and lotto tickets.