Waiting

I've reached the half way point.

That's what I hear, anyway.

I have this long yet to live, at least,

and here I am in perpetual delay.

Delay from what? I don't know,

truly. Just this feeling that I am

late for the start of my own life.

It's a very quiet sort of bedlam,

this state of silent, mundane urgency.

I go about my days, doing the things

I am supposed to do. All the while,

an alarm bell dings, trills and rings.

"What are you doing," a voice that

sounds like my agonising aunt rants,

"you should be so much further by now.

I don't want your couldn'ts and can'ts."

I want to scream back, in fury,

"I try so hard, all the damn time."

But I know, and the voice knows,

that there is no reason and no rhyme

that could halt its assault, any more

than seasons could be stopped from

changing. Transformation comes, sooner

or later - for most. I wait to become

someone better able to weather the ebbs

and the flows, to go with the flow, to flow.

I have lived so much in my half life,

and I don't feel I have learned how to live

half as well as I should. If only I could

take a break, a breath, a brief reprieve -

perhaps I could find the version of me

that can make the most of this chance.

She is somewhere out there - or

in here. In the most fleeting glance

at my own reflection, I catch her;

but she is gone when I look closer.

All I can do is live on, and hope that

someday I'll be someone who knows her.