Just A Teenager Poem by Onyi Ogwumike

I wonder if my pencil knows my age,
If my paper would reject my words,
Protesting my “youth”, labeling me “amateur”.
If when I look into Life’s honey brown irises,
She thinks of me inferior
With no real “experience”.
I wonder if I am really what my human bonds suggest.
Or if I am what I feel like.
A spirit tied to a stake,
While my mind swims through the currants of Mother Nature’s
Bated breath.
Life’s soldiers take shots at me,
Their arrows only just grazing my cheek.
Never once even scratching the iron wings fastened tight onto my soul.
I feel like the electric light of a bolting breath,
Enjoying an invincibility that reverberates through time.
I feel like the tear that balances precariously on my damp eyelashes.
I feel like the insatiable inferno that burns in my soul.
I feel like a heartbeat that beats in time with the concerto of Love’s pulsing thoughts.
I feel like taking Life by her horns, ignoring the dagger she pierces into my side.
But no.
In an American society today, I’m none of that.
Nor can I do any of that.
I’m just a teenager.