you’re not me, are you?
when i was merely fourteen-
i remember walking around wondrously throughout my town,
i wondered how people could live like this.
i look to my left and saw a fresh painted white house with a picket french and a freshly mowed lawn.
when i looked to the left- i saw a small house with mint green paint chipping off the wooden walls- white shudders hanging off by a thread-
with a left unused lawn mower that had nearly shin length grass sprouting from around it.
i remember thinking to myself- is this all that life was? the two options of life. the white picket fence or the lifeless wooden shudders house.
as i continued walking, feet patting against the road as the sun started to set i saw a group of boys around my age-
all laughing talking loudly- brotherhood i couldn’t have been more envious.
too my right i saw a women and her daughter going down the hill with her pink scooter.
i could’ve sworn at-least for a split second that girl was me.
as she pushed her tiny feet onto the black concrete with sweat sticking to her bangs i couldn’t help but feel envy- for her childlike innocence.
she did not notice her mother was fighting on call with her husband
she didn’t feel anxiousness for the future or present
she was simply ecstatic for her mother to be walking with her-
i looked down at my skateboard- the one i was truly never good at using and i placed it down. i swore as i pushed my foot onto the concrete going by the child
i could feel her lingering stare on my back.
i remember her saying “wow- that girl has a skateboard!”.
maybe just did it to impress her- or to get attention from both the child and mother- to maybe for once impress her and myself.
tho it didn’t last for long.
as i turned back to smile i was no longer greeted with a light brunette hair swaying in the wind as her bangs stuck to her face, her chubby cheeks smiling with childlike innocence-
i was greeted with a face of a random child.
her black curly hair and pale skin as-well as beauty marks and her dark eyes.
this wasn’t me.
i simply just wanted it to be, as i looked back to my-
no.
HER mother was no longer mine, this wasn’t my mother with her dark brown short hair and oversized glasses,
this was just a women i didn’t recognize.
Copyright © alice faith | Year Posted 2025
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