lukewarm

expiry date

my childhood didn't come
with an expiry date or a
stickered stamp of 'best before'

so i'm not quite sure
when it's supposed to end
does it continue
until i'm eighteen, an 'official' adult?

but no,
that seems far too technical
for something
as physical as childhood

and besides, 
i don't quite feel like a child and
i haven't felt like one for a long time
so that must mean
that my childhood is over

so when did i stop being a child?
was it when i woke up
with red 
between my legs
but no, 
that seems far too physical 
to be the benchmark
for something so emotional as childhood

so did it end when i
started crying myself to sleep every night
or when i stopped being able to sleep altogether
without needing the assistance 
of pill bottles

did it end
when i stopped wishing you would come home
when i started hating you for leaving
when i stopped  hating you
and started hating myself instead
for giving you incentive

maybe you took my childhood with you
in that gray bag of yours, 
(that you'd bring back from business trips, loaded with chocolates for me)
maybe you took it with you, 
in that gray bag of yours
to your new family
and your brand new life
with the red-ribboned wrapping still intact
unlike this worn out life of yours
which had obviously reached

its expiry date

and was no longer fit for your consumption

but no, this seems far too emotional
to define something
as abstract
as childhood

so maybe my childhood departed
not when i developed a permanent aversion
to the words

father

family

but when i discarded
my previous assertion
that caffeine couldn't cure anything
because after emptying
countless cups of boiling black coffee down my throat
without once complaining
about the bitterness

i no longer feel 

like a child