Noam

You can’t stop people from having babies
Little bundles of chaos and vomit
Erupting from inside them to change their lives
Soft and maneuverable
When you stare at the blank slate
It screams and cries back at you

You can’t stop babies turning into toddlers
Balls of energy and chaos
Misunderstanding, miscommunication and screaming
So much screaming.

Children, tweens, teens, students
You live a moment in your body and become someone else
Shed your skin and take your warmth from the sun
Never stepping on the same foot twice

When a thirty year old looks back ten years
They are horrified to discover they are still an adult
You can’t stop people from stopping
Changes slow, the blur becomes a steady frame

Like a man getting up from an airplane seat
Having made peace with sitting confined forever
You might realize you never meant this life
To be your final resting place
You had plans and ideas
For each year and decade
But years and decades are both just made of days
And days can go by unchanging
Like drops of water building a stalactite

But horror can become comfort
And we take the person we’ve become for granted
Holding dear onto our skin as it itches to shed
As change after change piles on
We’ve learned sameness,
Like a simplified lesson when the truth is too complex.
You can choose change, or it can choose you.
You can’t stop people from starting.