i wish i’d never grown up

where are my wings now?

i’m so much older than i can take. where did my childhood go, where am i going?

where am i going? i have no idea. i just wake up every day to repeat an immortal cycle of nothingness, the same undulation started again and unrepeatable—waters and seasons under the glare, the breath, of a full moon or a conscience. and wait a moment—did they really happen? did any of it really happen to me? did i live all those moments that i’ve carved into my mind? because i remember. some memories are burned into my soul, and i’m always the only one who remembers.

i’ll always be the one who remembers.

shallow things, moments, that create me and fragment me all at once, splintering and widening. moments that accumulate like snow. the white blanket that kisses the autumn ground. growing, growing, becoming heavy in the multiplication, becoming dense in the amassing. perfect snowflakes that seem like stars—they fall, and their edges cut into me.

burgundy has fallen on white.

the days were endless once, a continuum of thinking, of feeling. i watched the clock, but time refused to move. i sat there, staring at the wall, my heart aching, my mind wandering—wishing time would fly faster. wishing the moment would arrive where i’d find myself, wishing the moment would arrive when everything stopped, when childhood would finally release me. hoping, wishfully thinking that adulthood would make everything better, just with a magic wand: there, everything is fine now.

and now, my prayers are reality.

time slips through my fingers like water. he flows faster than ever, rushing forward, untouchable. he runs, runs, runs—and i cannot catch him. i’m losing touch with reality, i’m losing touch with everything, because i’m so worried about time slipping. over and over, it slips, like a fish that would just return to the river, and all i do is watch the flow pass. and i see my mom getting older—she isn’t frozen in time like my memory is. everyone is aging, and no one has the fish still in their hand.

i want the time back. the time i spent trying to catch it, while i had to sit on the shore and watch the shimmering light on the small waves.

but the wave arrives at the shore, there with the sea foam, and goes back, retreating, playing until it catches my feet and brings me in. brings me down, down, down into the abyss, into nothingness. but i’m tired of playing. i don’t want to play anymore.

i don’t want to play.

and so the wave returns back, me mindlessly thinking it did just because i asked. and the sea foam remains—the white cluster of dirty air, of dirty water, of memories. the nostalgia of the memories remains, and it will never wash off.

i want to go back to where i felt safe. but when was it? when was it? when i played catch with my siblings? when i played hide and seek with my brother and we laughed so hard that we fell on the ground? i miss that naiveté, that innocence. that moment of just living, without the looming dread of the future over me.

i miss when my grandfather explained astronomy to me, or literally anything else, because i loved to search on wikipedia in my free time, and he would explain it to me easily. that one dinner when he told me about falling stars—there, there i saw one.

i think i’m the fallen star. and i’ll never find my way back.

i miss everything and will never get any of it back.

i look through my childhood pictures so obsessively, almost once a month—a psycho, a stalker of my own life that has gone away. and i’m sad for her. i look at her white-blonde hair, the space between her teeth, her laugh, and i’m sorry for her. i don’t know who she is, how she felt, and i wish i could leave her that way. i wish i could spare her from knowing what i feel.

nostalgia is my own flagellation. old photos are my whips, and i keep bleeding, keep bleeding with time. the colors are not as bright as they were before. nothing is as bright anymore and everyone’s so far away, unreachable—the wave took them away. but they’re just down the hall, and my feet are frozen in place, and the hallway becomes each year longer.

every good thing has the inherent sadness about it for when it passes, and it will have to pass. everything will have to pass. it’s all boarding trains and then watching them go by from train stations, and i never arrive in time. they pass and i’m constantly too late.

do you remember how a blue sky felt as a child? when i was on the balcony in summer outside with my grandma and she pointed to the clouds and asked me what i saw? and now i cannot see clouds without that moment. i am loving as many people as i can and no one of them make me feel that good. no one makes me feel that moment again. i understood the whole world, i saw white air and said it looked like a duck.

maybe we are not ignorant, then—just ignorant of the many things we know.

so here i am in my mini apartment. in a big city. i’ve changed again, and again, because i have no idea what to do with my life. and i never thought i would arrive at this age. i never thought about what i would do later on in my life. this is all a new book—not a chapter, a whole new book and story.

the apartment is smaller than i imagined. the walls are white and bare, waiting for me to make them mine, but i don’t know how. i don’t know who “mine” even is anymore. i walk—three steps to cross the kitchen, five to reach the window—and i feel like i’m playing house. like i’m pretending to be an adult, waiting for the real adults to come home. but i am the adult now. the real one. the only one.

my mom calls. her voice is familiar, but also far away. she asks how i am, if i’m eating well. i tell her everything’s fine. great, actually. the apartment is perfect. the city is exciting. i’m doing really well.

after we hang up, i look at the time. it’s only eight o’clock, but it feels like so late, it is so late, always so late. i could do anything. i could go anywhere. i have all this freedom i once prayed for, and i don’t know what to do with it.

so i do what i always do. i open my phone and scroll through the old photos. there she is again—the girl i was. at a party, covered in cake. with her fairy wings. where are my wings now? who clipped my wings? where are my wings? where are my wings?

it’s so much colder than i thought it would be. i tuck myself in and turn my night light on

wishing i’d never grown up

i wish i’d never grown up

but the wish granted was one, only one. and i used it wrongly.