Once
I asked my wise mother
The age at which we become adults
- Not the arbitrary one -
- Because at 16 or 18 or 21 we are universal idiots -
And with a soft chuckle, she let me in on the secret
All of us
We are stunted and stopped
The buckets we carry as almost-adults,
They fill and fill,
They do not empty.
And so our shoulders must bulge and grow to carry the weight of our lives
The best of us adjust our grip, or find others with whom to share the burden
Of vessels which cannot tip out
No thing loved or dreaded or expelled or vaunted or vilified ever leaves us,
But simply papers in layered creases under the crush of the next and the next and the next
We can never expand or contract enough to fit snugly into the suits we bought for ourselves