Youth

Illustration by Himarni Brownsword

I am raucous and rebellious and want to revel in being young like a pig rolling in shit. I don’t want to be quietly content; I want my happiness to be obnoxious and acid yellow. I want to get drunk and hug a toilet bowl like a long-lost friend. I want to clamber hungrily into sex. I want to pick up stones on the beach and throw them as far as I can and, splash in the shallow with my clothes on. I want to love so big. I want to overwork and I want to do nothing. I want to be unsatisfied and fling myself at more, those four letters that hold the world inside of them, the O cradling promise like a soft baby. I want to go out without a coat on and shiver on the kerb waiting for a lift home. I want to run up to people and jump at them like a dog. I want my hugs to be huge and warm. I want to want, toddler-esque, ‘why?’ in their mouths . I want to run for no reason. I want to shake the floorboards with my dancing. I want to look in the mirror and think I’m hot. I want to rally behind manifestos and be filled with hope, and feel radical by being alive. I want to smoke badly-rolled roll-ups. I want to write poems about all the men who’ll write poems about me. I want to get fucking angry and shake with power, trembling at my body’s limits, feeling a red so massive that my head hurts. I want to be young.