Downhill

it is only downhill from here. these nights can never be recaptured, these summer days never seen again after the eighteenth cycle of the sun- a youth, dying in a moonlit blaze.

it is only downhill from here. soon we will be caught up in ourselves, go from reading under the covers to poring over paperwork and bills. but really, we were never destined for more.

it is only downhill from here. we're about to lose our last chance to breathe, right now is the only moment we have. but what makes us think that we'll take it, when we've slept away our adolescence already?

it is only downhill from here. as children we made reading romantic, but soon it is everything we do. we stare at our schoolwork like we always did, our lives now interspersed with sporadic debauchery.

it is only downhill from here. will we lose ourselves on campus, are we to evaporate in drunken flames? it was to be a diverse paradise, a liberal dream, but we have only ever heard of the nightmares.

it is only downhill from here. are we truly afraid of the coffee-fueled all-nighters, or is it the sex, the drugs, the verbal violence, the sudden drop into a high-pressure social fantasy that makes our blood drop to negative degrees?

it is only downhill from here. our parents say we will find ourselves, the media says it's all date rape and student loans. but we will plunge, forward onto dorm room beds and crowded showers, lecture halls filled to the brim.