In one hour and twenty minutes, I’ll be sixteen.
Maybe when I’m sixteen, I’ll stop picking at my nails.
Maybe when I’m sixteen, I’ll stop procrastinating.
Maybe when I’m sixteen, I’ll start living.
Maybe I’ll remember to tell my friends I love them and forget what it feels like to breathe so heavily that I think it’s the end.
Because maybe it’s the beginning.
Because maybe, just maybe, every last elated petal that’s escaped me is from a decomposing violet.
Maybe it’s finally time for the boomerang of bliss that I threw away at fourteen to come back to me.
Maybe I’ll catch it and never let it go.
Maybe this year, when I blow out the candles, the smoke won’t suffocate me; it will revive me.
I desperately, hopelessly, endlessly need to be revived.
Thirteen hours ago, I turned sixteen.
The world is tinted with love and the violet-colored lens is heart-shaped.
Maybe it will stay this way forever.
Maybe the sweet relief I’ve worked so hard to experience decided that one year was my finish line.
Maybe the unchangeable fact that euphoria would forever be out of my grasp has, in fact, changed.
Maybe the rosy disposition of my youth has faded; maybe the trampled grasses that I grew from are finally being mowed.
Maybe the endlessly apprehensive thirteen-year-old—the voice of my most clamorous insecurities—is settling into the earth.
Maybe her embrace will remain in tear-stained pillows and old eyeshadow palettes. She watches me each time I look in the mirror. She’s the gold beads on my second favorite bracelet, and she’s the dried-up eyeliner pen I’ve finally given up on. She winces each time I speak out loud in class, and she stares at familiar faces in the hallway long after I’ve glanced away.
Maybe fourteen-year-old me will stop checking to make sure that the thorns still prick her.
Maybe I’ll get to talk to her someday; she’s probably the one I yearn for most. Her gradual wilt took too long to be noticed. She stared at images of her younger appearance with the consequence of staring at the sun; I wish she hadn’t become obsessed with the burn. She haunted herself every day to the point where I could barely feel her excruciating touch.
Fifteen-year-old me is lingering close by, I wouldn’t want her to overhear my musings.
Instead, I’ll place a violet, the flower of February, in her tense clutch and hope that she’ll accept my peace offering.
The most significant—and most likely—maybe is that everything will stay the same.
Would that be so bad?
