At nineteen I was convinced
everything mattered more than it does
and less than it should.
That is not wise.
It is just accurate.
A call not returned
could black out a day.
A song heard in the right car
with the right weather on the windshield
could make me think I had found the whole secret of being alive.
A line in a book
could feel carved for me alone.
One look from a girl
could build a kingdom
or burn one down
and either way I would have written three pages about it
before breakfast the next morning.
I had a talent for enlarging things.
A gift, you might say,
if you were kind enough to ignore the damage.
I could turn waiting into doom,
a kiss into prophecy,
a bad week into personal mythology.
There were days I went around with my own pulse
like a soundtrack.
What I did not know then
was how much of youth is costume jewelry and real blood
worn at the same time.
The feelings are true.
The speeches around them are often borrowed.
You live inside both.
That is why so much of it sounds grand and foolish together.
I do not hate that boy.
He was overlit, overmusical, overhurt, overready for disaster,
and he thought half his life was happening in perfect slow motion.
He was wrong about plenty.
He was not wrong to feel huge.
You are only that breakable once.
Only that loud inside your own head.
Only that certain the next song,
the next town,
the next love,
the next version of yourself
is waiting just past the edge of the parking lot
with the engine running.