Things I'm afraid I'll forget with age.

Things I'm afraid I'll forget with age. The way the grass feels beneath my bare feet. How to sleep in. How to be the "bigger" person. Listening to loud music to feel something. The taste of spicy foods. How jumping on a trampoline is the closest ill ever feel to flying. How to ride a bike (I mean a real one, not the stationary ones at the gym). That wrinkles are just a part of knowing I've lived a long life. How to camp in a tent. How to not take things so seriously. That driving a car is a privilege. How holding your hand is the safest I've ever felt. How I really dislike soup. How to age gracefully instead of with rage. How important it is to stare at the moon and watch sunsets/sunrises. That I was once the youngest and oldest I'll ever be. That aging is a privilege not gifted to everyone. That I love fiercely, with all that I am and that is not a weakness. How to make grilled cheese sandwiches. How to grieve and hold space for my feelings. That I am loved loudly and how to love loudly in return. How to age in general. How to be the oldest version of myself and be okay with that. How to be happy with this life I've built. How to be freaking happy with this life I've built. -M.D.L.

Recluse

I will coil up inside myself like a snake wrapping tightly around its prey. I will shut the doors that are my eyelids to the world, I can’t bear to look any longer. I will retreat into my other lives that live deep within my chest, the dreams and hopes I once had that are now locked inside the cage that is my being. I will retreat to the only world that feels safe, the one inside myself, the one I created. I will wrap my arms around my legs and pull them into my chest like it’s the only movement that might save me. I cannot bear to feel reality any longer, it’s too much so I will shut down my being, lock it away. I want to upheave my past lives, my future lives and just simply be. I want to sit with this pit in my stomach of who I am and melt it into the dreams of who I’m becoming. Life is overwhelmingly too much and I feel every once of its weight on my shoulders even though I never asked to carry it. Put it down, put it all down they say but little do they know I collect feelings like rocks and shove them in my pockets until they weigh me down. I will become a recluse, shrivel up and bury myself deep within the crevasses that make up my future. I will rot here inside myself until the world decides to change. Until the world decides it can bear to hold me in its arms and coddle me like it’s the only mother I have ever known. Until the world accepts me for who I was, who I am, who I am becoming, I will die here inside myself and wake up anew like a caterpillar bursting from its cocoon. I only hope the world will do the same. I only hope one day the world can hold me like I have held it, tightly and with all the love I’m capable of possessing. If only the world could love me like it’s supposed to so I didn’t have to sit here and hold myself. -M.D.L