Being in your twenties is...

Being in your twenties is

sitting in your first adult apartment with

shitty wall décor and $5 wine. It’s

either panic or great change and

so many crying car rides at 6pm,

bandaging your heart with

twinkling fairy lights and TikTok. It’s

music and poetry and

syrup with a side of espresso,

a drunk cigarette

or a $10 ice cream cone. It’s

secondhand clothes and

living on pay day then

waiting for the comedown. It’s

drinking without discipline and

waiting for the comedown. It’s

loving hard and

losing your head and

hoping there’s no comedown.

Being in my twenties is

a messy room and mind. It’s

the fridge being empty on Friday and

learning how to take care of myself. It’s

taking for myself,

not worrying about you,

believing in me, and

wondering how mom did this. It’s

reinventing myself every 6 months,

the car battery dying every 3,

thinking about cutting off my hair, and

never doing it. It’s

thinking about changing life paths and

hoping I’ll get around to it. It’s

figuring life out and finding myself

every other Saturday

behind a sticker-filled journal,

pen and lyrics in hand, or

in a cubicle chair surrounded

by faded dreams.

Being twenty-two is

concert t-shirts with skirts. There’s

always a song playing in my head

and a hope that I’ll write one like it. It’s

despising my body or feeling

euphoria in its curves,

putting down my phone and

eating more that day. It’s

acne, needing new jeans, and

changing my razor blades

after too many bumps arise,

like red flags warning me

to stop caring about body hair. It’s

loving someone too much and

losing yourself a little just

to claw your way back to her. It’s

fine to be lost.

In this phase of life,

it’s preferred.