Growing Up

By Anonymous

You can’t wait forever

You’ve waited 18 years

You’re impatient; You rush to get things done

Rush and wait and rushrushrush

and wait

again.

Take the time and do it right

You don’t know how to do that

You’re a child in this regard but maybe you are

still simply just a child

Though they tell you

You should know better

You’re too young to understand

You’re not old enough to

What are you then?

If not an adult

If not a child

A teenager has nothing

Time is all that matters

Wait till you’re older

Rush to grow up

Caught between childhood ignorance

And the responsibility of adulthood:

Work to live and live to work to live to work to live again

And then

they wonder

when you grew up

Now you’re

tall enough to reach the bathroom sink,

Almost old enough to buy a drink

I’ll have an iced tea, please

As if it wasn’t just two years ago you could barely look

in the cashier’s eyes without shaking

The years have gone by in a blur

Those lazy wonderful summers of childhood

are over and now

you’re off

to be an adult;

whatever that is