Youth
We’re only young once
“So scared of growing old/ I’m only good at being young.”
-John Mayer
Candy bar wrappers and Mountain Dew cans
and packs of cigarettes we’d sneak down
a Carolina back road. The days of our youth.
You’re only seventeen once.
The radio played I remember running through
the wet grass, falling a step behind.
For us, it was a dirt road, twenty miles
per hour, skipping class because
consequences skipped us.
In the winter we made promises we knew
we’d break in the summer, just like the
hearts of shy girls we pushed into the pool.
You’re only eighteen once.
At nineteen, fall rushed in. We gathered up
what belongings we hadn’t burned, then
split out to separate cities and towns.
Some to college. Some to work. Some to
serve Uncle Sam.
Survival was a joke we would tell to others
at parties and in hallways and to bunkmates
in a foreign desert, people waiting for a
punchline we never got quite right. Life isn’t
that serious…
