GRADUATION

I thought four years would be forever and not end  
That somehow one year would be like ten  
 
Looking at pictures of my classmates  
Some have not changed  
Those who have  
Either way, I still remember us as teens  
 
Now we have matured  
Out of our childhood shells  
We will never be children again  
 
Twenty-something years ago seems so far away  
I can still feel the warmth of the eighty-degree sun beating down on our cloaks  
Guys in black  
Girls in red  
 
Remembering the excitement as it was yesterday  
The nervousness while standing in the aisle  with grass beneath our feet  
Waiting to walk out of our childhood skin and into the next step in life  
 
The memory I sure did reminisce  
Of the brand new ninth grader  
Entering in  
Walking into the unknown abyss of a city of grown-up kids  
Here I was  
Skinny  
Self-conscious  
Meek  
 
Although as time went on I grew stronger with self-esteem  
 
I felt when we were nearing the end...  
Walking down the football field  
As we would never do again  
Our new life would soon transpire  
 
Immensely saddened  
Please let this day not end  
All I could think of  
Can't we stay  
Just one more time  
But our time has ended  
 
I knew I would go my way  
And they would go theirs  
My classmate  
My friends  
 
And maybe we would never see each other again  
But if we did  
It would be high school all over  
 
Back then, eighteen and inexperienced in life  
 
Now...forty, with kids, husbands, wives...  
 
How life has molded us