colossal youth

I realise that I am sixteen. I am now expected to have faced losses and to be able to grow used to them, to think maturely, and to be able to shrug it off as an aside bearing little importance to the grand scheme of things — or whatever people say when desperate for comfort. I should have already gone through that stage of pubescence, in general, confusion, disorientation — a very middle middle class, run-of-the-mill, uninspiring coming-of-age story that would matter to no one but myself.

It's not as if I'm having an epiphany. It is also not a state of immense clarity and the euphoria of being all-aware. I would describe it as if a fog had descended upon me to reduce my visibility, and this myopia, in a sense, has forced me to look at the things that are coldly corporeal and this is an upsetting feeling. It is the feeling of discovering that you are no longer a child and paranoid members of the public will eye you suspiciously, because they have forgotten you were once a clumsy toddler, waddling, ambling, tumbling, alongside pillar-like legs, being scooped up, scrunching up your face into a tight knot as you feel the cool dampness of a wet-wipe sweep past cheeks that are never spared the regular affectionate pinches that you gradually felt disdain for.

Now I can only see my grandfather regress by the day, languishing in this evening's humidity, watching the news at nine but concentrating more on the bag of party nuts he stubbornly snacks on and then stows away, though it is common knowledge between us that it will be eventually forgotten. Lights, in technicolor, flit across the walls and ceiling from the almost spectral glow of the screen, and I accidently cut my gum while observing him grapple with the crumbs from the unyielding rigidity of the packaging and the reality of an existence that is starting to wane.

I hate the metallic taste of iron in my mouth and the action of swiping across the tender spot to discover a film of incarnadine gloss, flecked with scarlet specks suspended beneath the shine that gleams under the lights like gossamer. In the living room, my grandfather finds himself in another coughing fit. In silence I apply pressure to the crest of flesh below my tooth to watch blood pool to form a wispy crescent against the enamel, and in silence I realise that sixteen is merely the start of more coming-of-stage stories, of celebrating firsts, of moving on with lasts, of life and of loss.