At 5 it sounded like silence and tasted like fear.
My hand upon my heart promising someone else’s idea of god I will believe if only he fixed you.
ignorance in the belief you needed fixing,
innocence in the belief things could be fixed.
At 7 it sounded like school yard bullies and tasted like salt.
Oceans filled with the tears I cried.
move an inch and they’ll see you,
breath and they’ll get you.
At 11 it sounded like punk rock and tasted like blood from the inside of my check.
Heart beats in time to drum sets and black jeaned boys.
The year I first learnt to bleed for the future and not just the past.
At 14 it sounded like the air leaving my lunges and tasted like vodka. The numb cure to forget that you no longer filled my life, my earth, my future.
Freedom always comes with a price, your life for my future drowned in the bottom of this bottle, if only she saw it that way.
instead she turned and I sunk lower.
At 16 it sounded like love songs on bad speakers and tasted like his lips.
A chemical mix of me and him, of want and need, I was never that good at science see and even now,
I still struggle to understand how one person can taste like home.
At 18 it sounded like cheers and clinkies, slow capping across the stage, it tasted like smoke and damp grass.
The strange blue hue of sunlight through a tent, as I sung away my last few moments youth,
Standing at the edge of choice, I have already forgotten weather I jumped, or merely fell pushed like so many others into this world.
At 20 it sounds like rage
20 it sounds like hate,
20 it sounds like disappointment
20 it sounds like hospital beds rolling down corridors,
20 its sounds pill bottles and silent screams held back by will power and poisoned lips,
20 it sounds like bone against skin your knuckles my stomach, your hands my throat, your face my fist,
20 it sounds like echoes of want and need hope for some kind of god dam future,
20 it taste like blood and salt,
20 it taste like bruises,
20 it taste like hospital food and home brew, left to stew in the kitchen for far too long,
20 it’s the end I have given up on you and you on me, I have given up on future and forever’s.
At 21 it smells like spring and taste like new mourning due.
At 21 I pray for the chance to be 22.