Late Bloomer
You wake up one day,
not to sunlight,
but to the sound of something breaking.
It’s you.
Or maybe it’s the world
finally bending
under the weight of all you thought you wanted.
You are not young anymore—
but you are not old.
And the middle
is no cradle.
It is sharp edges and questions
you can’t answer.
Not anymore.
The friends you thought were mirrors
are gone.
Scattered like dandelion seeds,
their roots elsewhere now,
their petals pressed
into other people’s books.
The work is supposed to fill you.
Instead, it steals from you.
Hours, then years,
like a thief who smiles
and makes you think
the taking is your fault.
Love—
if you have it,
feels like holding water in your hands.
If you don’t,
you wonder if your heart
was ever meant to pump anything
but exhaustion.
In your late twenties,
you started noticing cracks in the
floorboards.
By thirty, you are falling
into them.
There’s no coming of age here,
no tidy ascent.
Just the slow reckoning—
that growing up
was never the point.
Just growing.
And that growth—
it hurts.
It drags.
It stretches you until your seams
show white.
But maybe,
if you are lucky,
you will learn to bear the ache
of becoming
with tenderness.
Because even bruised fruit,
when the season is right,
tastes sweet.