Gaining Age

A beautiful, beautiful experience, that we all play everyday.

I was ten with a scuffed knee, learning how to jump without falling.

Now I’m seventeen and still missing the timing sometimes—

Late buses, late texts, late nights where the computer screen is the only light to be shown next.

Gaining age can feel like unlocking harder levels you didn’t ask for, but also like finding secret paths you couldn’t see before:

How good coffee tastes at 7 a.m., how quiet a street can be after the late rain,

how a friend’s laugh fits exactly into a bad day.

Life is beautiful in ways the tutorials never mentioned—

the soft click of a door when you come home,

the way sunlight lands on a messy desk,

the pause before someone says “I’m proud of you.”

I still play the game, not to win, but to remember how it feels to try.

The world keeps updating; so do I.

-By Paige M. Christensen