I Should Have Been in My 60s in High School

I never belonged to the life that I lived.

I never believed I could be what I should.

Awkward and quiet, too sweet to beat up,

I was a ghost, someone barely in focus.

My school friends seemed wiser,

they knew how the world worked.

They had big game plans, and places to go.

I was naïve, running from my own shadow,

leaving tradition with no certain goal,

certain a wrong step would end in disaster.

If I could relive those years as who I am now,

no more a wallflower, wilted and faded,

survivor of failure and new-trail blazer,

I’d show them experience is better than youth.

published in Sonnets to Sing