Sixteen
He wanders through his days, appears aloof.
I glimpse him sometimes, when he steps
Outside his private, passionate world
Long enough to bathe, to eat, to talk.
In the dead of night, I wait breathlessly
To hear a car, a key, a step.
I think about the child he was.
I bore him kicking, screaming, crying
Down a road I had mistakenly led him up,
Not fully wakened from a deeper sleep
Than I had imagined then.
Sometimes he cries. A lost love or one found.
Fear or sadness shatters for a time
The carefully crafted facade of manhood.
For that one moment, he reaches out.
For that one moment, I can breathe.
A child, not quite a man.
A man, not quite a child.
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Submitted on May 01, 2011
Modified on April 24, 2023
- 37 sec read
- 4 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | XXXX XXXXXXX XXXXX XX |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 637 |
Words | 125 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 7, 5, 2 |
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"Sixteen" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 13 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/84224/sixteen>.
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