I know I am too young, and I know I have time, but it seems like every day ends and begins with a flash of green.
I am only sixteen, but every passing moment I am without the feeling of forever, I feel panicked.
The yearning can be temporarily calmed by platonic adoration that tides me over. Staring this love in the face, how could I want more?
How could I want more?
Still, every morning I wake to a dock, bounded like the time I have left, and every night before I fall asleep, I am staring that same dock in the face.
The salty sea breeze is unwelcome, despite how I normally love the sand and the sun shining down on me.
As the wind hits me in the face, I tend to forget all the times the beach has been fun. Sitting on the dock, staring and staring until my eyes hurt at a faraway light, is no way to spend my youth.
I know these feelings are irrational. I know that if there’s an eternity waiting for me, it’s foolish to want it right now. But I just can’t wait another day.
Even if it’s the wrong light, one sage or forest green rather than the specific, all-encompassing, correct green, I want it now. I want to make mistakes, and I want to fall into the water headfirst, driven by this unstoppable desire to call this light mine, to be called mine.
The green light is no longer romantic; it is haunting me. It follows me from dawn till dusk, onto plane rides, grocery checkout lines, pre-calc tests, and dinners. It follows from a large distance, and when I approach it, it runs.
Because it’s not my time nor turn, yet I can’t escape the green. I remain unwanted, just as the light remains luminous and the dock remains made of wood. All of them are basic truths.
And wanting to change that has made me a problem. I am asking too much, too soon, and I have been for too long. I am obsessed, to the dismay of anyone who has to know me.
I think it’s unfair.
The green light is chasing me through parking lots and waiting behind every corner, and my retaliation is only in the form of hope and want.
More days will pass, with sunrises and sunsets characterized by grief for what I have yet to find. In my dreams, or maybe even some real day, I will find a glimmer of green in someone’s iris, and every waking second before that will then have had a purpose.
