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After staying up all night listening to the Backstreet Boys I started contemplating about how much I changed from the boy I was in the 90s and the man I am now in the 2010s. Much has changed, though there’s still a deep bond that connects me to my past. I wrote a poem to try to express how I feel about it. It’s called The Man I Am and The Boy I Was.
The Man I Am and The Boy I Was
Lately, I haven’t been acting like myself.
I used to wear my heart on my sleeve,
But now it’s lying all alone on the shelf.
The music is still playing,
But I forgot the lyrics I was singing.
I thought I knew the beat to the song.
Guess I was wrong.
I don’t want to be the one to say
That life’s gotta be spent living day to day.
No more am I the man I once was.
Long ago now, time has hit the dust.
The boy inside me yearns to be freed.
He seeks to escape his mind’s greed,
And rescue his lonely heart.
The boy is me, and I am the boy.
The same boy who treated love like a toy,
Playing with others emotions
Fun and games, I thought through all the commotions,
The older he, well I, grew
My emotions became the game, and then I knew
Life is but a struggle; one of beauty and loss.
When I look back
I could see how I became the man I am,
And lost the boy I was; in fact,
He wasn’t really gone nor was he dead.
Our realities were all trapped inside us, instead.
The boy never really disappeared.
No, he continues to watch me become the man I once feared.
Mensur Gjonbalaj
February 11, 2013
