Adolescent Actions Poem by Sarah Sisson

There is a child beneath my callous, developed age.
I see with inexperienced eyes, and at times
I do believe my thoughts of former days.
I make choices with no discoveries.
I see with an open heart not yet scathed by hardships of simply living.
I protest my responsibilities to imitate what I have learned through the years.
I refuse to behave appropriately in mature situations.
I cannot mask that child in every beat of day and night.
I will not seek comfort in my advancement.
I relinquish the ability to choose wisely.
I have that child within me always.
I carry the burden of recalled experience.
It is as if situations are ongoing collisions of first time experiences
I have innate familiar pain.
It comes back to me.
The challenge of childhood…
Those thoughts of the first time… in good or bad situations ….
Those thoughts still lie within all my needy moments.
This child is who I believe to be…
…as the recollection of growth does not respond to my fear of living.
I taste my life in the past with no unfolding.
My child will always be inside me.
I will not let her go.