These Were Not the Best Years

Youth is wasted on the young

They told me

these were supposed to be

the best years.

Youth.

Golden days.

Wild nights.

Carefree hearts.

But I was

none of those things.

I was

small rooms and slammed doors,

watching adults forget how to love.

I was

a body I didn’t understand,

a mind pulling loose

from every rule I was born into.

I was survival,

long before I should have known

what that word meant.

I was the child

who didn’t get to be a child.

And if those were

the best years —

God help the rest of me.

But here I am.

Forty-one.

Older.

Softer.

Fierce in quieter ways.

Loving like the world

doesn’t own me anymore.

Waking slow.

Drinking tea without fear.

Choosing my life

like no one gets to

take it from me again.

This —

this so called late bloom,

this calm becoming,

this holy ordinary peace —

is the best time of my life.

And I built it

with my own

two bloodied

hands.