everything i need to know i learned in 1998

[kidsinsuits]

With what spoon-fed courage are we born,
that face-forward certainty buried
in skin and ribcage.
We grow with stubborn determination
the thick-split-smack-bang that comes with puberty
and afterschool specials:
The churning upward
The yearning forward.

And we break at our appropriate points
hairline fractures of bony impotence
keeping us small and mean
and weak in the knees.
But our edges knit, our flesh re-spins,
in quiet rebellion against those things
that fall apart and rot.