On being 23

Three more years have passed since I last posted something on here.  Partially because I was trying out Tumblr, and partially because I really haven't written much since 2011, besides haphazard journal entries.  I'm trying to change that.  And I need a real blog.  So... here's a poem I wrote tonight, sitting in Scratch Deli before (and ashamedly during the beginning of) their open mic, because I accidentally arrived 45 minutes early.

I'm 23
with a little less optimism
than at 22,
but a little more certainty.

I'm 23,
and as much as I don't want to admit it,
I know now my earlier years
were neatly packed with naïveté---

not stupidity---
there's a difference.
It's got something to do with innocence,
with good intentions, with newness,

with the sense that the universe
was waiting for me to unravel its mysteries,
that each of my epiphanies meant something...
(and that means something...)

I'm 23,
and obviously,
I've lost some of my egocentricity.
Or maybe I've gained some. Damnit.

I know, at least,
that the world seems to have lost its simplicity.
But I also know that that belief
arises from the fact that I'm no longer being coddled by society,

insofar that universities are, relatively,
bubbles of beautiful ideological and intellectual exploration,
blankets of superimposed structure
and collectively cultivated purpose.

I'm 23,
and the existentialism that brought me wonder and glee
when I was 21
is now preventing me from being able to fall asleep.

But magically, or mystically, or just surprisingly,
there still lies within me
some faint memory of a foundation,
some glimmer of the feeling of groundedness,

and I tell myself that means I heaven't completely lost
that thing, which encompasses so many other things:
that holy thing,
that happy thing,

that thing that the subconscious
of Western society
tells me I don't have a chance of,
but that thing that my heart tells me I need.

I'm 23,
and I'm redefining--
just for me--
what it means to have hope.