On My Sixteenth Birthday

On my sixteenth birthday.

I curled into a ball in the frayed, silk afterglow of childhood, 

Watching myself play with mom for the first time, eating raspberries in the garden, tumbling great towers of building blocks.

I watched myself stay up late with my friends for the first time, 
When the big kids told us all to be quiet.

How quiet the rest of the night was then; how naive and jubilant we were

To believe that there was no world outside of our heads.

The waves didn’t crash on the edges of our island, and the sun would never rise. 

The morning birds would have to wait.

But the sun is risen now,

And we wither in the light.