March 8, 2025
[Author’s Note: The brief this month was to write a teenage angst poem or song, this is one attempt. Also was listening to too much of the kids’ teenage playlist while on a business trip – so maybe more Chapple Roan, Olivia Rodrigo, or Sabrina Carpenter than Taylor Swift]
I saw you just the other day, the first time in so long,
I thought I would be happy, but somehow it went so wrong,
And I realized for the first time, that the flame I’d kept alive,
Was nothing more a figment of something else that I had contrived…
And somehow I always knew that image of you in my mind,
Was not who you became, and not who I would find…
… I was left behind…
…life is so unkind,
How could I have been so blind…
You crushed my dreams already,
Please don’t crush my childhood memories,
I know somewhere in you is the one I used to see.
Somehow be the one, the one who lifts me from my knees,
Be the one who brings me hope, be the one who rescues me,
Don’t make me beg, oh please, oh please…
I put you on a pedestal and forgot that you were real,
A one-dimensional construct, a naive imaginary ideal,
… I am so left behind…
…life is so unkind,
How could I have been so blind, so blind…
You crushed my dreams so easily,
Please don’t crush my childhood me,
Somehow I feel that the one that was used was actually me.
Now I know no one will lift me from my knees,
And then to make me lose all hope, with no one to rescue me,
Don’t make me, I beg, oh please, oh please…
And realizing the truth, only magnifies all my fears,
I am so embarrassed, I can’t seem to blink away the tears,
I feel naked in front of you, I feel awkward and ashamed,
You never knew me, you could never understand my pain…
And yet you see right through to me, my tears get lost in the rain…