Self-Portrait at 18

I know it’s a bad title 
but I’m carving these words 
out of my compacted mind. 
I’m trying to mix the mud of my thoughts 
into something more coherent 
than to do lists and quiet 
mornings with the windows all pushed up. 

The trails this spring are closed. 
“Come back tomorrow” the sign says, 
but the tomorrows could stretch 
forever and no one would ever know. 

This is how I feel today: 
torn open and shut down, 
like I have one foot in my bedroom 
and one on the other side of the Hudson. 

II. 

I don’t remember the day I was born, 
but I’ve been told it was full of light 
that grows from a rainstorm.
The way it builds, golden, 
like a patch in the sky,
and is swept away by its height. 

It’s one of the things I think about 
when it’s too nice to be inside. 
This and my eyes. Have they always 
been the color they are now? 

Recently, I’ve been learning Italian 
and cursive and trying 
to piece together the parts of me 
that fell away across the years. 

I haven’t looked at my baby photos in a while, 
but I know somewhere, in the thousands 
stored on our old hard drive, 
there’s one of me in an orange jumpsuit, 
examining a sliver of sunlight on the stairs. 

III. 

Today is Earth Day and tonight there is no moon. 
Google displays photos of the world 
from the past twenty years: decaying, graying around the edges, 
forests morphing into shopping malls and roads 
with endless yellow lines. 

Last Monday I bought a book about strangers: 
sixty-five letters to people 
who are incrementally unreachable,
figmented by reality, 

captured only in those solitary seconds 
when I wake in the morning 
and sit in bed, replaying memories over 
and over behind my stinging eyes. 

My favorite story, the one that haunts me most, 
is about a mother, her dying child, 
and the doctor who saved 
them both from darkness’s edge. 
I can’t get them out of my head. 

What is life except the divide between 
process and potential?

IV. 

There are things I’ve given up on
like drinking orange soda 
on a street corner at midnight
or buying train tickets with a boy I’ve just met. 

I am so in love with the idea
of running away from home, 
so in love with faraway planets,
thumbprint cookies, the possibility of building 
my own history. 

Nowadays I go to school, 
stop at the same lights, 
attend the same classes, 
drive home on the same highway. 

Where has my sense of adventure gone?
Am I actually bored or just out of ideas?

Sometimes I can’t stand myself. 
I park at the airport, 
eat crackers with the windows down, 
and watch the planes rise and fall from the sky. 

V. 

Google is glowing on my laptop, 
listing ways I can reduce my carbon footprint. 
My toes are cold. 
The moon is still hiding,
and I am sitting here, 
thinking about that time, in second grade, 
when I stole a book from my classroom library. 

I liked the way the pages warped and crinkled, 
the smell of the spine, the picture on the cover. 

I don’t remember the title
but it doesn’t really matter. 
It was more about the details, 
how it made me feel. 

I’m not very good with names
or dates or numbers but I can tell you 
the place I associate with every smell,
or the color of the Rome apartment 
I slept in for a week, 
or, as a child, the phrases I liked 
but didn’t know the meaning of. 

VI. 

I awoke on my eighteenth birthday 
last November and realized I wasn’t a kid anymore. 

I don’t play pretend 
or crawl around in the woods, 
looking for roly polys. 
I’ve stopped coloring with crayons.

It makes me want to cry. 
When did I stop?
Which day did I play my last game, 
collect my last insect, 
scribble my last blue blob? 
Could I remember if I tried? 

Somedays I feel like
I’m still seven years old. 
Wasn’t it just yesterday?
Is tomorrow really today? 

VII.

In my hometown 
there are ribbons in the trees, 
bottles in the streets, 
closed doors with music seeping out. 

I have stopped counting my departure days. 
I will board the plane when it comes.
I will mail the letter at the last hour. 
I will seal up all those years when the future was blue, 
and we were kids, 
and the city didn’t cut the skyline in half. 
I will probably not forget you. 


Inspired by "Self-Portrait at 28" by David Berman