Andso you grew up

And so you grew up. Just like that. Who is there to blame? No one, really. For you were, after all, given notice, I mean, they told you to "take the opportunity to make snowmen now, before you get too old". So partially, you might blame yourself. Because you did not believe them, most of what they said was usually just lying for you. But if you now have grown up, just as they predicted, perhaps all the other things they said are true as well. In that case, it means that any time soon you will choose the warm shoes rather than the nice looking, you will drink alcohol for enjoyment, not intoxication, you're going to skip your afternoon tea for the sake of sleep. You'll wish you had more snowmen.

Suddenly, you stand there with considerably small shoes. Red sandals, that were perfect for you yesterday, they were newly purchased. The t-shirt feels smaller now than before, but you wear no jacket because it is an evening in June. This summer would be cool, they said - it was certainly a lie which persisted. A playground with worn out bars, the tree that used to provide you with a hiding spot, the gravel that had penetrated the skin so many times, throughout the park, the world cannot hold you anymore. You have become too big. Now that your heart is filled.

Before the tumble drying effect, when Arbor Hill still appeared to be a hill, you had taken the bike out from the garage. They had said that they knew that you would grow up, so the bike had room for enlargement from the time it was purchased.A strategic trick. It lurched and revolted, but still moved forward anyway, your little hands, plastered with red fingernails. You avoided stopping at all intersections as the shoes never quite reached down to the ground. The wheels were spinning in the yellow light. The wind, the consequences of riding a bicycle in the speed of light, grabbed your hair, drew aside the curtain that hid your face. It asked you to stay, begged you to slow down and maybe if you had not been in such a hurry, you would not have grown up just yet. Though at some point the bike had to stop and eventually you had to grow up. So it was decided. Skeppshult iron was tightly controlled by the laws of physics and the muscles in your legs choked when they countered gravity up the hills. It was easier downhill and before you knew it you were there.

Your bike was carefully locked around a tree; it always took such a time for you to unlock it. Once, the bike with the Hawaiian flowers on it disappeared. You thought that they lied when they said someone could take it if you didn’t lock it in position with double locks. Around that time you should perhaps have realized that what they said was the truth. The bike was stolen and you grew up. You pretended to believe in what they said and therefore locked the bike more carefully, so carefully that you always were last at the parking-place. Mosquitoes attacked every part of your bare skin, in what you thought was an act of pure evil. But in retrospect, you realized that the squad joined forces to try to get you to turn back. They shouted imploring you to stop! But the desperate calls were melted together into a single constant buzzing in which the meaning of the message drowned. They gave up on all the peaceful methods, and attacked for your own sake, to make you turn back, flee while you could! "Hide yourself for a for a little longer", stay within the safe bubble, you know now, is called childhood. "Why don’t you stay?" Suddenly the world made a run: vast mountain ranges towered, rapids came charging towards you and the ground was split into millions of tiny little shards! But you could not be stopped. You know now that nothing could have made you turn around. Possibly the fact that death could have put a leg in front of you, but neither that had the desired effect. To erase you from the map of the Earth, to take out the batteries from the flashlight, was supposed to be the same thing. That you'd turn around would be equal to killing the flashlight. To be a child forever is not the point of the game of life. So the batteries were left and the light from the lamp brought you forward.

His "Hello" let the water seep down along the Earth's crust and the lonely dimple healed the wounded land at once. He held the hand out until you took it. Suddenly you're standing there, two seconds old, with a heart that has grown out of your shoes.