Senior Year

Sometimes I feel my happiness slip past the barrier of my mouth.

I try to clench my jaw,

Make my teeth impenetrable sentinels,

But I can never stop it.

So I try to hold onto the tangible.

The formless just never seems to stay.

I hoard pictures and emails

That I pray can hold even an ounce of what I felt in that moment.

I never understood why my mom always clung to pictures.

Make sure you take at least 10 pictures with you in them.

I’d shrug her off not understanding that most of the time pictures are your only hope for an echo of a feeling.

In this (my final year), I feel content and discontent.

Did I seize all of my happiness?

Did I savor it before it slinked out of my body like a sly mistress?

I don’t know,

And that terrifies me.