My days are backwards

I wake up tired and go to sleep wide awake

I stare at the clock as if with every hour something might change

All my days become one, merging the moon with the sun and everything in between

I sit alone, reminiscing the past as if it’s not my own

I hear my mother’s voice and every inch of my body aches

“Let her go play with the other kids” she tells my dad

But I’m paralyzed, becoming one with the bed

Trying to shake off the weariness that’s stitched to my skin like the sweaters I’ve outgrown

Letting the shades of yesterday and tomorrow color the painting of my today

I wake up to greetings from versions of myself I’ve buried and detached from long ago

I slowly become a stranger to the body I possess, how it looks like and what it holds

I haven’t seen my face this week

But what’s a week when you’re losing yourself with every day

And what’s the point in keeping count anyway?

I’m years older now, mom

I’ve grown taller, I can barely touch my toes

I’ve changed skins, but it’s still the same you used to hold

You no longer have to worry if I don’t play with the other kids; I’ve made friends of my own

“She’s a big girl now” my dad reminds her

and me

I melt away as I hear those words that widen voids I never knew I had

I wish I hadn’t rushed growing up

My years are unfolding in a blink of an eye

“Step by step” I tell myself, but I’ve been running my whole life

Why does it feel late when I’ve just barely begun?

I ask myself a new question with every tick of the clock

I can’t stop my mind from reiterating the question of why

So, I ask and ask some more

Until the hours become my years

Without answers, I lie in the uncertainty of what is and what isn’t, and who I’m in the chaos of it all

I wait till the clock strikes twelve hoping it stops this cycle from eating my years away

but clocks don’t have power over the inevitable

A new day arrives dragging the worries of last night, except that today I’m okay with not knowing why

Find Lina on Twitter.

The Cycle of Running Age