Stuttering heart beats

Incoherent insecurities at 2 am

All the poems I'm afraid to write
are the ones about growing up.

Directions don't fit right in my head
Because to know where to go
is to grow up
And I'm still yet to wrap
this world around my head

My worst nightmare was turning 20 until I turned 21.

I'm two sizes too small
Made to fit in a body
that towers over most
Some times I like to shrink behind
flat flip flops and taller people
Maybe if I were shorter,
they wouldn't notice how far
I've gotten along

I tell myself to buckle up
that I'm not at the brink of adulthood anymore
breathing in its scent from afar
waving at it like it's Peter from Neverland

There has been too little time for introductions
And it's inside me already
taking up the space I'd saved
for pixie dust and stellar dreams

I always thought my forehead was too small
to fit the frowns of ageing
Yet it's hard to deny a truth that stares at you
Cold and real, as a bathroom mirror

Mirrors like humans,
Plain and mundane
Glaring simplicities
Hidden complexities
Cold, washed realities

I'm too simple for my taste,
too boring for others'
There is no garb of mystery
to allure you here
Just pure unadulterated
irrational fear
Of things that make you older
and wiser
I have run out of defense mechanisms to cower under

My mother could see through them until she started seeing me
for something else

Every word out of her mouth is a promise left in the air

And it's choking me

My lungs are full of hollow premises and whenevers and if evers
The air inside them bubbles
out into a sigh
As I gulp down
argument after another

They all say, "You grew up too fast!"

Which is to say--

"You're getting too old, get married."

And I feel myself spiraling down
their questioning eyes and prods
their unspoken assumptions
and the ones professed

Reminding me of the vermilion
On my friend's forehead
And the hot tears
On my cheek

My family laughed at me that night
Told me she wasn't dying
Told me to stop talking about marriage like it was a funeral

Well, maybe you should stop making it sound like one.

When you tell me to live my dreams to the fullest
before the fateful moment,
When you tell me to learn
things I don't want to,
When you tell me to slow down
the things I love
in the future,

It sure feels like an unfair deal
Where my body is being exchanged for my soul

Mother, believe me,
I do not hate men,
I am only too jealous of their privilege and wary of their strength

Their iron fists distract me
from their soft brown eyes,
Their privilege distracts me
from their kind hearted words

Mother, I did what you told me to
You taught me to dream and I did
You taught me to never say no to them and I didn't

Then how do you warn me of their potential deaths with the same mouth?

The optimist in me dies a slow death everyday,
as I hear the patriarchy pounding at my door
It's out in the streets now
Sucking dreams out of little girls
Making women out of them
Jittery and anxious,
Unheard and unsafe

They ask me why
I don't like the smell of roses
That reeks of weddings and vows
A stranger and a new house

I tell them

You can not make me like it
Until you stop painting it a bondage.

I will never believe in love
if you tell me
That it comes with egoes
too masculine
and hearts too small

And

I will never be ready,
until I grow up
until I smell its scent myself

And it's nothing like roses
But like hot chocolate and sugar
and home and happiness
and dreams and friendship
and opportunities
that make me believe
that my wings will stay
and so will he.