UNDER-STANDING THE REAL WORLD

Belittled by rejection of 1 Timothy 4:12,

The maturity of my face weighs more heavily than

The size and nature of my heart,

Whether it has known scorn or joy seven times over for

I’ve barely turned past a few chapters and

Each momentary page is not that weathered.

In fact the years that I have passed are considered a

Prologue or skippable prelude to reality, the main story;

I have been told that they are not real, like an introduction

That’s fiction for a make-believe story that’s a biography,

Which is frightening because I thought I was the author of my life

When apparently I’m just among the stage direction.

It seems that being two or three years elder

Makes one two or three feet taller, since

Each page is not marked by my stylistic fingerprint,

But by the tread of a heavy footprint:

Staggered, jagged lines that I try to read

But must be too youthful to heed.

What is my purpose if it is solely to grow older,

To add age upon page until I’m recognized as legible or

Credible enough to beckon thought when

My spine will then tire of the weight of pages bent and

My memory will be lost like page 43,

And I simply become the epilogue?

I would rather live as a child and crawl

On all fours, smearing the ink ordained norms

And demean my image with insulting stains

Than learn to walk upright and commend the younger

For upholding the table of contents of the older.

I want to toss away these doctrines and stories and

Ask the greatest writers what the point of life is

If our hearts are only paper thin.