Staircase at Fifteen
Ascending, her centrifugal
influence captures me
and I follow,
breathless,
witless, wordless,
despite all longing
and shared
discretions, in spite
of the thundering
pulse
and the incessant
demand to act
or run.
She pauses, looks
down, sees
nothing.
Suddenly freed,
spinning off
and slowing down,
shrinking,
far below, on equal
footing but so
apart,
never to meet
in truth, unable
to define direction or
motive, I remain
fixed as she moves
higher, far away, close
but up,
always up.
O at the Edges 
Truee
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Sadly so. Thank you.
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I hope this is meant to be somewhat humorous, Robert, because it made me laugh.
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I found it amusing to write. 🙂
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It’s amazing how adolescent attraction makes you want to run and hide. Maybe it’s not adolescent attraction. Just attraction, in general.
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That is such a difficult time. I wouldn’t want to relive those days.
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Oh I like this very much Bob. And the photo is perfect with it
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Thank you, PS! Those staircases. Those ups and downs!
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Sometimes too many downs too many times in a row
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Oh, yeah.
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A great poem! I wonder how many times this happens in a lifetime?
Dwight
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Thanks, Dwight. It happens all too often in adolescence!
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Yes, after forty years I still remember!
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Same here.
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We all have our staircase memories. There should be an anthology of staircase memory poems. I did not just volunteer to edit it, by the way. Just sayin.
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I can see it now – The Ascending Descent, an Anthology of Ups, Downs, and Angst!
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This made me think.
https://rivrvlogr.wordpress.com/2017/08/05/missteps/
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Don’t you know that thinking is dangerous, Ken?
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As I have learned.
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🙃
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Pingback: Staircase at Fifteen — O at the Edges – The Education Slave
Oh my! Yes I remember these feelings well.. hard to walk that path and yet ever so blessed by it..
Love your poem 💕
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It is good to have experienced those things, but please, no repeats!
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Haha!! So true!
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I Love this poem, Bob! It sure brings a lot of memories back too haha!
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Oh, geeze, they’re always there in the background.
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Pingback: Missteps | rivrvlogr
Infinity. Will we ever reach our upwards destination? Nice. 💜
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We keep trying!
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Very vivid memory of something like this. Taught adolescents for many years and i know exactly what it means.
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I think we all share something like this.
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My adolescent years are many full-moons ago, but I still vividly remember all those scary heart-throbbing encounters, and seemingly, the life threatening departures.
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Same here, Ivor!
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Agh I really didn’t want to go back to this place but once I was there, I enjoyed the ride. 🙂 Also, I can definitely hear you reading this one.
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Not for the weak of heart! Hmm. I may have to record it.
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To my embarrassment, i don’t think this happened to me. High School was no time of romance for me, the bad skin, brace & general awkwardness from being the only kid in school to listen to Robert Johnson & secretly read, yes, just read, anything, saw to it that any female encounter was relegated to harsh words against me of weirdo & worse. Not to worry though, all that weirdness was to my benefit in university, the skin cleared up, the puppy fat slipped off, the universe has a way of creating balance.
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I was almost done in by awkward shyness…
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I hated being young.
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I wouldn’t want to be that young again, but I wouldn’t mind shaving off a decade or two from my current stack o’ years.
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Neither would i. Can’t wait for old age & playing senile to young people to piss them off.
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I’m rapidly approaching that point.
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This post is beautiful and all too real. Excellent work.
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Thanks very much.
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I don’t think I ever experienced this exactly, but oh yes–adolescence is a constant up and down!
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Definitely a time of upheaval.
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I’m still flummoxed by many of my encounters with other humans (who do always seem to know where they are going, whereas I am still totally lost). But there’s a special aura to it in adolescence that you have captured well. A breathlessness. (K)
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It’s funny, but I’ve talked with some of my friends from back then, the ones who projected those auras of “having it all together,” and they confessed that they were just as confused and perplexed as the rest of us. 😀
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Yes, I think that’s a staple of adolescence, no matter the outward situation.
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Nice poem. That staircase has a lot of stairs.
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Thank you. Yes, it looks like a good climb.
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Yes it does. Did you climb these stairs?
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No, I’ve not had that pleasure.
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HA-HA. Thought you might have
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I like a story poem …
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I think those stairs have seen many stories!
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