The “25” Crisis

25 is not old. Let me repeat, 25 is not old.

Yet I can’t help but feel the looming shadow society has cast over me.

Taunting and whispering twisted old delusions, like aged milk that has grown sour.

“Youth is in and young is better,” it says.

So when I wake, I avoid the mirror that keeps count of creases, lines, late nights and short mornings.

I scold at 25, the half-way point to 30- which has somehow become the new 40.

I blink and it’s the next month.

I cry and it’s the next season.

I laugh and it’s the new fall,

where the leaves change color faster than my new thoughts.

Aging- both dizzying and terrifying, too serious and permanent, undoubtedly necessary.

-M.R.