NEW AGE
So they let you into the bar because your friend is taller than you,
And you relive moving away from home after home
And imagine the moving boxes as mixers, pouring out of glass bottles.
This does not pain you.
You have always looked young for your age,
In height and in face,
And maybe this is why you love youth so devastatingly.
Also why you know that pop punk was made strictly for 17 year olds.
You think you have been 17 forever
Which you realize but don’t say because that’s a strange claim to make,
But you do feel it.
You feel seventeen in your chest still,
And it’s not the punk of it,
But the pop of it,
The clique and the rasp that one latches onto in voice and electric guitar,
And when you articulate this, you are dancing to pop punk
By some singer in her early twenties.
You are pacing while you write,
Of course,
Your hands scattering,
Wrists broken,
Rings off.
You are wearing a white dress.
You have to wear platforms so that it doesn’t stain the floor.
You are still small.
You are still mad with your teen heartbreaks.
And though you are still mad with them,
Your bedroom looks as though you have lived forever.
You can’t fall asleep in the humidity,
And so naturally, you are thinking about stolen words at poetry slams.
You snap your fingers as you lie there.
And you can breathe now, you know.
That’s new.
When you got out of COVID isolation,
You had 24 hours to move out of your college dorm all alone,
So you put all your ex’s hoodies in a garbage bag,
And you left the bag in the basement
Even though you weren’t even angry.
As you did this, you were also thinking about that one poem from years ago
Where you talked about burying the butterflies in your basement
But they’re still not buried, oddly.
Neither are you
Which you know because, somehow,
You just got into a bar even though you were too young,
And you’re wearing your ripped flower tights,
And you’re imagining your first tattoo,
And it’s 3 in the morning and you’re dancing.
Have you noticed how often you dance?
Have you told anyone?
You’re dancing, and you’re pacing across your room
While you write this poem
And you’ve lost all blood flow in your hand
But you are still writing and pacing and
You know it feels good to move out of your dorm
To have the boxes at the ready
To make yourself small
To move out of your pain
To move out of your breakup album
And to be called “she” at the bar that you were too young to get into
And then, in that moment, to know that they’re not even talking to you, really.
They’re not even talking to you.
You’re not even there at all.
You are caught up with the butterflies emerging from basement trap doors.
You are freeing yourself,
You are moving in alone again,
And you will never get accustomed to it
Because you are still eternally 17.
Though you are not actually 17.
Though you are, you think.
You have to be.
If you tried hard enough, you always could be.
Lillian Grace Lippold (they/them) is a queer interdisciplinary artist from SoCal, currently residing in NYC. Their work can be found in Sterling Clack Clack, Bryant Literary Review, Santa Ana River Review, Coffee People Zine, Adolescent Content, Clementine Zine, Quillkeepers Press, LUPERCALIA. 'i am the love letter' (2020, Tablo Self-Publishing), 'Portraiture' (Elite Theatre Company). More at lillianlippold.com