College: A Year in the Life

To have anticipated the ascent

of my internal locus to its present position

would've been… impossible?

I say not (as very few things are denotatively infeasible)…

'unlikely' carries the harmonic, musical tune

of connotative correctness-

had even the world's

most bewitching psychics or

most masterful mathematicians or

most cutting-edge experimentalists

guessed where I would now be,

based solely on the me of yesteryear,

each and every man would have guessed wrong. 

I walk away - a heart-changed person

by the yearlong cumulus of resplendent remnants -

taking in stride my leave,

my feeling of abandonment

of a year in the life gone forever-

the first to have felt like a year in my life,

the first to have felt like a year I will miss. 

This was the year I did anything of substance,

a year where in the mirror that never fabricates

shows a change outward due to a change inward. 

It all began with nervous introductions

and concluded with heartfelt goodbyes,

with a carriage of friendship

picking up and dropping off

acquaintances along the way;

those few who remained till the very end

were destined to become most invaluable: lifelong friends. 

The year inaugurated itself

with political ambivalence on all fronts

and ephemeral stances,

capricious like the ever-changing winds of public talk;

and it ended without confusions or uncertainties

but an autonomous young man of his very own young opinion-

on gay marriage, abortion,

and life's so many other lingering little questions

that in actuality prove to be stealthily so grand. 

Entering on unbroken ice-

made from the waters of communal alliance-

a man had even found home in someone else's body.

I had never known homogeneity

to those my age of the opposite sex;

my first of so many firsts,

the initial embrace, interlocking and intertwining

of two disparate individuals bonded in angelic accordance.

A mere moment into this new year, the bubble popped.

A being, innocent and yet ignorant, 

unstained by love and other things,

emerged a tyro at life;

this creature pure white was painted with life's brush

in the colors of pastels that shimmered and glittered,

reflecting love, friendship, society, and ultimately growth. 

The year is gone; the boy, I, now a man,

has gained the most significant of important insights:

what I want.

For once in my life, I had a choice;

because of this newfound freedom,

akin to the one our forefathers had so long fought for

(followed by the men with night-colored skin

and the peoples populating the fairer sex),

I had liberty enabling reform.

I changed my life.

College.