2006-2024 by Virgil Voyles
Hey, your birthday is coming up isn’t it!
It’s your 18th, I bet you’re so excited
What do you want for your birthday this year?
Bracelet beads.
Specifically the letter “E”
So I can finish my love letters
For my soulmates hundreds of miles away.
(They’re not letters. I talk to them every day. Let me grieve.)
To forgive my grandma.
I want to never see her again
I despise her
And it’s exhausting.
(I will let go one day. But not today. Let me grieve.)
Money for college.
Security that I can try and fail and try again.
To be able to close my childhood bedroom door
And leave the first 18 years of my life safely behind it.
(I will be ok. My life is just starting. But please, let me grieve.)
For my grandmother to be ok.
For her cancer to go away
We cannot make it disappear forever
Only prolong the inevitable.
(She is ok right now. But she will not be one day. Let me grieve.)
For my girlfriend to be in town.
So she can watch me grow up.
I want her to surprise me
And come back.
(That is cruel to ask. But I miss her. Let me grieve.)
I want to be in a room with everyone I love
And everyone I still love who I no longer hold.
I want them to crowd around me
Uncomfortably close
And sing “Happy Birthday” off key
And applaud when I blow out the lights of my childhood.
I want them to surround me
And suffocate me with their love
And I want to grieve.
For the things I have lost
The things I hold, but will lose one day
The moments I will never get back
The dust in the house we no longer live in
The dogs we never got to bury
The people we never got to say goodbye to.
I have had a hole
Deep in my throat
For 18 years.
And for its crossing into adulthood
Please
Let me grieve.
Virgil Voyles is a freshman at the University of Tennessee Knoxville and is majoring in Classics. They love to write and create art and are currently working on a book of poetry.