This is a poem I wrote when I was 16 as a projection of my future self. Twenty years later I still hold my 16-year-old self with love and care. Enjoy.
I walk past my attic door
Haven’t been up there in over ten years
I walk back and turn the latch
Hearing the clank-clanking of empty beers
I pull down the stairs
And that’s exactly what falls down through
What used to be my office
Ain’t it funny what some negligence can do?
I walk up and each step creaks
Hope it’s just empties I find on the floor
Toy chest my sister and I built
Dolls and toy soldiers; cleaning was such a chore
Photos from our baby years
Old novels and movies; comics and sports cards
Old records; man, it’s been years
At one far end the whole wall just for darts
Over in a dark corner
Curtained by cobwebs, vague memories tingle
The office where I used to write
I was good back then, back when I was single
I wrote for magazines
A few novels, some screenplays that really shook
But my most treasured writings
Were the poems that never made it to book
As I walk the floorboards creak
Shadows change as the sun shines through the skylight
A familiar glimmer
My eyes rest upon the pen that kept me up nights
I sit in my office chair
Memories flood my mind; dreams I once had
Plans to be a big rock star
All that’s changed now, it’s gone, now that I’m a dad
Now that I’m a dad
Of five beautiful kids
Now that I’m a husband
Of one beautiful wife
I would never change
A single thing in my life
God’s gift to a man
Of five beautiful kids
God’s gift to a man
Of one beautiful wife
God’s gift to a man
To serve Christ all my life