A Five Year To Eighteen Year
A Five Year To Eighteen Year
My parents don't sleep in the same bed.
To a six-year-old girl,
That never mattered.
But to a seven-year-old girl, it does.
She knows that other kids
Have parents who sleep together,
In the same bed,
Every night.
To a seven-year-old girl,
It doesn't matter that her parents
Don't talk about stuff.
But an eight-year-old girl knows.
Other parents have conversations,
Small ones, big ones.
An eight-year-old girl doesn't know
What an arranged marriage is.
But a nine-year-old does.
What a nine-year-old doesn't know
Is that her parent's fight.
But a ten-year-old girl knows
That her mother thinks her father isn't enough
And her father can't stand her mother.
Fortunately, a ten-year-old girl
Doesn't know
About divorces.
But an eleven-year-old girl does.
She also knows that the only reason
Her parents are still married
Is because they can't get rid of her.
A twelve-year-old knows
That she's a burden
A constant reminder
Of two lives gone astray.
A fifteen-year-old young woman knows
That whatever her life brings her
A sad broken marriage shouldn't be included.
A sixteen-year-old girl knows better
Then to call her friends over for a night out.
What if they find
That her parents are messed up?
An eighteen-year-old girl knows
That she wasn't the product of love
But of a tradition.
Of hate.
Of unsaid things.
Ripped stitches.
Lifeless birthdays.
Eighteen-year-old looks at every other five-year-old girl
And wishes she never finds out.