I think perhaps I've grown shallower as I have aged. My words came so quickly, once. Aged, of course, is wrong- my self-conscious writing corrects: At twenty-one, my youth is all around me. But aged, too, in a way: not seven, not seventeen. Perhaps the words are gone because the woods are taken out of me: I walk for hours, but for hours dead leaves decompose underfoot Down paved-over suburban lanes- The little forest pockets are sad, somehow Or frightening. So much is hidden, and even if I dig None of the leaves turn to needles, and I am not in my heart's home. Even as I write this, I sit: On the fourth floor My whitewashed walls around me My window open: this, at least, I will not concede. Not even on the coldest days. But even then, I'm lacking thought. I seek the clarity that once I found so easily- That once I couldn't cause to leave me alone To let me sleep. I run and try to think, to get my head out of myself Out of the self-indulgent rituals I've allowed Of waiting Of staying warm Of eating when I am hungry Not letting myself suffer until the clarity appears. My greatest fear is that I will remain indulgent self: Grow older, maybe "wiser" (shudder), take a job on the wrong coast for the wrong rent -rent itself, once so abhorrent in my mind- to chase a lack of dream down the sky. Perhaps there's still a chance. I have to stay present. I cannot let the anodynes of life suck me dry.