I’m Twenty-One and I’m Still a Foetus

I’m twenty-one and I’m still a foetus

I was born into this world twenty one years ago but

I haven’t been born into myself yet

I’m still a womb, carrying this person

Who is yet to be me.

I’m twenty-one and the only thing I know

Is that I don’t

Know anything.

I know that perhaps no one ever has known

No one ever will.

I’m twenty-one and I have stopped filling in answers

To life’s every question. To the word question itself

Facts have become questions

Questions have become facts

In their permanence. In their omnipresence.

I haven’t been born into myself yet.

At twenty-one I’m still a foetus.

I think maybe I need a hiatus.

I’m twenty-one and love is not a word I use anymore

Intimacy is only anticipation

And heaven is always just out of reach

Love is being in limbo.

Like the foetus which is in-between life and non-life

Like Schrödinger’s Cat which is in-between death and non-death

Like me, at twenty-one.

I’m twenty-one and I’m afraid of death

I think that is because I’m not born yet

To be alive is to be ready for death any moment

I cling to life like a foetus clings to the womb that nourishes it

Only when it let goes is it born

Maybe to be born is to die in one sense.

So what do I wait for? Death or Life?

I’m twenty-one and I haven’t got a clue.

All I know is this – my water has broken.

The labour pains have begun.