Grown Down

 I wrote this in the summer after my sophomore year. I was living in a duplex in Saint Paul with three other girls from Macalester. For the first time I was paying rent and cooking purely for myself and despite the independence, I longed for a kind of lost innocence. As a young adult I feel like one often teeters on the brink of maturity and a nostalgia for an adolescence that isn't so far removed.

Grown Down

I want to be awkward with you
To read comics on the bus
To be twenty and laugh too loud
And bike into street signs
And never stare at my reflection
And think wine is sour and coffee too bitter
I want you to cough after each puff
And I’ll never inhale
And I want to laugh when you run your tongue
On the outside of my ear
I want us to sit on my stoop
Because I don’t need to invite you in
Even though my name is on the lease
I just want you to rest your hand furtively on my hip
I want us to keep our clothes on as you tell me the personality
That you ascribe to each number
I want you to laugh at me
Not with me
I want to blush
And sigh
I want to forget
The stories painfully etched on the undersides of my breasts
On the insides of my thighs
Even though they’re in a language you’ll never understand
I want to make innocence ageless
I want to smell hesitance
To taste sweet doubt
Our cynics can keep each other company all night
But I want you to remind me
Of what it felt like
I almost remember
When you stutter
When your bangs fall into your face and you blow them sideways
I almost remember when you kiss too eagerly
When your breath smells like the cigarettes you smoke to seem
 cool
But I can’t find it
I know it’s in basement boxes
years from here
Girls and girls from now
I just want to chase it with you
Even if we never find it