I was born twice. The first birth happened on the cusp of lips of my mother's orifice, a sudden squeeze of physical suffocation turned into a painful gasp of oxygen. It was then I existed.

The second, under the awning of a charioted sky of my 25th year, an overlap of my first birth, it was the tangible year my age had caught up with who I am.

I am older than I should be, I was frustrated in the form I had been given, I enjoyed the pleasures of a young adult, gossip, simplicity, the lithe and limbs, skin and bones, joints fitted sockets, I was able to move; the ability to climb, jump with no effort, and the possibility of reliving my virginity. Men would come up to me, and flirt, to talk, to steal what only I could give, and I too would blossom under their attention, to play, tease and flaunt. But I never found amusement and wonder; I was a still photograph, suspended in running one foot off the ground, about to land amidst all the continuous reel of an old silent movie. I was to be enamoured and admired, I had charm and wit but was never admitted to the frivolities of curiosity and the joys of discovery.

But I had my birthday. There were candles, two, both shaped in numerals denoting the number twenty five, pink, lit at the centre of a rectangular shaped cake. There was a celebration, gifts and drunkards strewn, all shapes and sizes. They laid out spanning the entire room in piles, one gift atop the other.

My psyche, who I was, living in a generation separate from my own, same era.

Maybe I should stop complaining so much, it must be the hormones. It was just so difficult going through adolescence again. Damn it, I hate puberty.

-the confession of a reincarnated poet