Darling, take your time, what’s the rush?
I gripped my pen tightly as if it was the only weapon to keep me away from harm, it had started consuming me; yet it felt warm.
I lived in a loop– stuck between time and numbers, each tick and tock ringing through my head. I whispered, “If only I could stop it, I’d get this right”. I wished to understand it better, but I found myself in a labyrinth where each path led me to war.
“You’ve got a gift.” I was often told as I received my rewards: medals that shimmer, certificates that made me feel brighter. But as time passed, I took a closer look and met the rust that grew on the faces of my hung up medals and the ink that was no longer steady on my stacked pile of certificates. They only showed the worth of my glory when I was shining golden — but now my heart was no more burning and the questions no longer lingered in my brain.
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I had not realized it but it was not the papers that I was in war with, I did not raise my pen to fight against it, the clock did not bother me nor test my limit. It was my aching heart that forgot the feeling of gold rush — the skin on my finger that burned and peeled more each time I thought to fight, and the paint that had dried up on my untouched piece of art.
As I look in the mirror, I am greeted by the laughter of my four year old figure. Innocent and armorless without knowledge of the sixes and sevens that will soon tear her apart. The rooms she’s yet to enter and explore as she loses a part of her much more. She seems like yesterday; so close– yet the smile she wears looks like something I’ve pushed too far away.
She had grown faster than the kids her age. She does not indulge herself with shows that sing about fairies and princesses; she has fallen not for love but to the world where each one is desperate for answers.
I feel like my feet are stuck in sand each step I take closer to her. As our distance lessens, my nervousness grows much more. But when I finally felt her warmth, I mustered up the courage and I whispered to her,
“Take your time, it is the one that is golden. Enjoy your youth for it is the one thing you cannot erase.”
And I take one last look at her as she fades away. Tick, tock, I hear it again but now I don’t let it fade away as I get up with a smile on my face.
