In one of my last decades now
(do not contradict, I know
where I am on the Path)
and still waiting to grow up.
What does that mean?

I’ve felt the same more or less
since late in the second decade.

They say it to everyone
and maybe it’s specious and
we never do, or we were already
but it scared someone
and so we were told,
over and over, that we were not
yet grown. That we still had
work to do, and we do, and we did,
but nothing really shifted.

I know I’ve walked the Path I was set upon early
and I’ve been much the same
for the whole time I’ve been walking
and I’m still ungrown,
still unseasoned into much
that is different.

So then, into
the last decades, still waiting to say
oh, I see now; I see
what they’ve always wanted from me
(do not contradict, I see clearly now):
to not be me.