that ROOM

you're three years old
and life is simple
you see everything in colors
and shades of love...
everyone is your best friend

you're five and a half and the
ROOM
is cold and dark
and you know, you know
that this is wrong, so wrong but
HE
doesn't seem to think that
becuse it won't stop and
HE
won't stop even though you have said
NO
so many times

you're eight years old this morning
and you're tired, so tired but it's getting easier
to forget and to pretend
that it never happened

you're fourteen and frantic and manic
and there's so much going on
what with everything ending and everything begginning
and that fact that
the boy you've loved for most of your life is right beside you
eating popcorn and smirking and asking you to dance

now you're fifteen
and you feel all of five and a half
alone in that
ROOM
excet that in the dream you aren't alone and
you're pretty sure that you weren't alone back then either

you're seventeen and figuring shit out
it's getting easier to count to ten
and hold your breath and to ignore the scars and just let it be
forgiveness is the word of the day
that and decency
and that really is what it's all about

there is a boy, as there is always a boy
but there is also a girl
and there is you and so many broken hearts
and a handful of moments that
are to you
perfection
incarnate

eighteen now and workin in a coffeeshop
with a black apron and poetry,
scrawled on the backs of receipts and napkins and the underside of your arm

and for some reason you think that you've met someone who'll make things all right

nineteen and completely lost
on your back and feeling and praying and waiting
for that boy who was ten years past being a boy  who always seemed to forget
that you were just eighteen and fresh out of high school
and you wake up, not with him, never have been with him, not this one, not the ONE
and remember his arms
and more importantly his words and
those looks, those god damned looks from behind those glasses and beneath his hair
and all you can think is soulmate.

you're still eighteen, give or take a handful of hours
and it's scary because you are still basically just that kid, that girl, in that
ROOM
and you're still marked, always will be, even when they fade
because you're the one who made them, those marks
and there's possibility, there's the future, there's all that is glorious
and oh so real and defined perfectly by
uncertainty
but there is still that
ROOM
and there are still those marks
and you, little girl, may not be five and half anymore,
but life is still not fair, and you know that, and we know that
and thats all there is