Eighteen
Leg shakes, and then shakes some more
Restless foot, tapping out the percussion of confusion, of his conflicting wants
All in the poignant melody of adolescence and first love, first sex and first belonging
It’s a conundrum, isn’t it?
When the future is so expansive
Blinking and dazzling in its uncertainty
Trembling with potential and possibility
With brightly lit roads and textbooks brimming and dinner parties spilling
All played to the accompaniment of jazz and trombone, acoustic guitar
Black and white piano keys
He imagines one room of approving teachers, heads nodding
Another room full of crotchety judges, gavels banging
And a third room full, this time, with small town referees -
Self-anointed but insecure all the same – pursing their lips round cold, metal whistles
But then thinking better of it and letting their lips fall
Uncertain, after all, about how to keep score
Those referees, he quietly laughs to himself,
Those would be the students
Himself one among them
All those gate keepers and their damn arrogance
His own damn arrogance
His own damn confusion
But the girls
Ah, there would be girls, too
They’d wear knee socks and tall boots
Bangs dyed pink would tickle their eyebrow piercings
A small tattoo of a black bird – a crow, perhaps - or maybe a turtle hatchling
- tucked ever so delicately behind an ear
So tiny that he’d have to be in kissing distance to even see it
But he’d walk that distance
He knew he would
His fingers would travel that fretboard
His thumb and pinky – calloused now – would span that gap
Because he was practiced, after all
and loving and compassionate
and capable and smart and, just like his mother promised
So awfully talented, so painfully worthy
It worried her, his future
It worried her to the quick
She wanted him to seize it
To grab it like a spring time plum or a summer peach
Gobble it in one mouthful
Quick, fast
Do it now, take it now
But growth and learning keep their own time and can’t be measured
There’s no recipe with tidy increments calling for a dash of this and a sprinkling of that
Self-realization, self-confidence,
Wherewithal and know-how
They can’t be prodded and ushered in
Like a girl in a prom dress, like the rolling credits to a film
All that marches alone
Marches to its own rhythm
A metronome whose pendulum weight marks the groove
At its own discretion
So she’ll have to sit back and wait
Circle the nest in her nightly vigilance
Hawkish, but ineffective just the same
His eye hones in on the girlfriend he has today
The daily comfort he has in home and his childhood valley
Tangled up in her soft brown hair and ivory skin
She clings to him and he to her
And their whispers sound like routine and safety and what’s knowable and here and now
And oh so very familiar and cozy and safe and kind but treacherous, too
Because it could be a trap - or not
He scratches his head, befuddled.