Between Poem by Maya Reid

Between

Between childhood and adulthood
Lies the age of the teenager
Between elementary school and college
Lies high school
The “best years of our lives”
And while we’re in high school
It seems as if
We must live in the future
Must stay ahead of the game
As anguished teens
We are all running from our
Shadow-riddled pasts
Running straight past the present
Into the future
Where things have changed
So we turn around
And run back into the past
Re-making all of our mistakes
Until we learn
That the past cannot be our home
We were different people then
Upon making this realization
We stumble into a new zone
A new era
The present
We try to live in today
To live for each passing moment
And it works for a while
Before falling into chaos
When you realize
That the present is simply
A combination
Of past and future
That today
Is yesterday’s tomorrow
And tomorrow’s yesterday
And then
Face it
You’re stuck
Between two warring dragons
Between a rock and a hard place
And the walls are caving in
And the sky is falling down
And you try to hold it together
But you stretch yourself too far
Spread yourself too thin
And suddenly
Unexpectedly
Though you’ve known for a while
That this day would come
Unexpectedly
You are startled
By a hideous sound
The sound a dry twig makes
Cracking under winter boots
The sound of your shoulders giving way
You hear the sound
Of your own fragile neck snapping
You tried to find a place between
Two steps ahead of the game
And two steps behind
And made your entire sphere of existence
So small
That no one could reach in
And save you
From yourself
And the walls still cave in
And the sky still falls down
And suddenly there is no more
Between
Snap!
Game over
You lose.