Growing up is finding myself still trapped in the trench I fell into when I was just a kid. The earth around me smells the same, but the roots have grown beneath my toes. They tickle me with memories long lost, of summer days, when the sun would reach this bottomless pit. When flowers could be seen blooming along the edge and unripe blackberries would calm my feverish starvation. Long before the gutter stopped swallowing water, dying with a gurgle that promised the next rainfall would be my demise. The thought of escape has dulled after my fingernails did, when they dug into the earth to cling to anything, to grasp tangible hope. In manic fright, I used to clamour, as if running from the earthworms would delay my fate, as if their ever-moving limbs could never reach me. Not in a thousand years. Not in a decade. Not before I finally got out. I hold on to the crumbling walls, with the hope that they must fall eventually, to give way to a grassy meadow I can't recall running across as a child, where dew would finally quench my thirst and hands would help me up and soothe my bleeding knees. Where soft voices would murmur in concern, where someone remembered to miss me and to look in the trenches by the wayside. Here I flail in the mud, as if my voice hasn't ceased screaming a long time ago, as if I haven't gone numb from the cold. One day in the distant future, I shall remember why I fell into this hole. Until then, I won't notice my body has lain motionless forever. I won't feel my legs stir, I won't see my limbs grow, I won't understand I have dug my own grave a long time ago. I won't know I have grown since, secretly and quietly, I won't know I can stand up and step over the ledge until sunlight burns my ashen skin. I won't know I was only in knee-deep.
