Teenagery Musings Before I Complete Two Decades: Boxes and Rooms

I am not one

To go back to messages exchanged

Words typed and backspaced

Emotions behind dimly lit screens 

But when I do

It feels like unpacking packed boxes

Ones lost (forgotten? lost? forgotten?)

While shifting 

towns, 

homes,
and rooms

With a friend's comforting words 

In a city lost in blurs

The only extension of home 

In a city that is not mine 
Like a landline 
With the spiralling cord holding my legs
Rooting me back in the ground

Soft voices
In 8 minute tracks
Warm white light
Washing faces at 2 A.M.
Laughter in spells of sleep
Love? Comfort?

An almost room 
With a name on top

Songs sent back and forth
Photographs
Conversations of 'facts'
Stars
Flowers
Poetry
Boxes that should be tagged 'miss'cellaneous

Misspelt words
Written through watering eyes
Desperately reaching out
Badly worded texts
With pruned fingers
Waddling through the drowning water

Traces of terrified fingers

Typing naive responses 

To older boys 
Trying their 'luck'
At what? A Fuck?
Asking about
Threads covering my skin
Questions I only understand now

Boxes I never open
With photos I never seeked
With texts I never read
Disgust echos in every fibre
Long lines of texts
Confessing supposed undying love
From both the unknown and oddly known
Bad rooms that I would rather lock

Arrows shot through
Anger and hurt
Confrontations 
Rolling eyes
Clenched teeth
Smashed screens
Realising the 'ends' in friends

Quick articulations
Meticulously chosen words
Sharp witty terms
Half-hearted burns
Terms 
Politics
Accusations
Name-calling
Blocking 
'Please go google'

Boxes with cobwebs
Memories so old 
That even feelings have now gone cold

Turning twenty is terrifying, moving out of the 'teenage' years fills me with an odd sense of growing up and dread. I have always been a person who has not allowed myself to indulge in 'teenagery' things, especially I've never let my poetry be about teen cliches and crisis or cringe. This week I let myself indulge in the cringiest cliches of being a teenager because it is the last time I get to, so here you have it teenagery musings before I complete two decades. 

Pac(k)man

Instructions: Use the arrow keys to move, pack all the boxes, avoid the ghosts. 

               XXCueArcadeMusicXX

With the sunlight streaming in through my now curtain-less windows,
I look around my half empty room.
A turmoil of emotions within me. 

I am not packing things, you see,
I am packing memories. 

                   XX ThreeLives XX

As I pull down the posters off my wall, my heart sinks.
Then come down the golden lights that had been strewn across my window and the pictures that had accompanied me through the nights.
One by one.
Leaving the walls naked and exposed.

It doesn't feel like my safe haven anymore. 

                     XX TwoLives XX

Next comes the box of ' Letters To Future Me'. By the wise sixth grader that I had been,
Signed off with the hope that I was happy. Along with the little trinkets;
the piece of wood from my class seat,
the pieces of chits that I had kept,
chains and lockets.

I almost break down. 

                       XX OneLife XX

As I clear my desk out, I feel a tug in my stomach.
From the candles, to the books, to the diaries, to the dried flowers, to my little dinosaur erasers, every little detail that made my desk mine lay lifeless at the bottom of a cardboard box.
My place wasn't mine anymore. 

I break down. 

                    XX GameOver XX