Mature For Your Age

I was fifteen with a broken sky

Grief in my lungs just trying to survive

You were twenty-three with a savior smile

Saying I seemed older than my life

You said I was different from girls my age

Said I carried myself some other way

And every doubt I tried to raise

You’d answer with the same damn phrase

“You’re mature for your age,” you’d say

Like that made it all okay

Like words could somehow rearrange

The years between our names

You said maybe in another life

Like that made it right

Like the problem was the timing

Not the years between our lives

You said you’re mature for your age

Like that changes everything

But you were twenty-three

And I was fifteen.

When you found out how young I was

You stepped back just long enough

To say we had to wait a year

Like distance somehow made it clear

But you stayed close enough to keep

A kid believing she was seen

Like sixteen suddenly erased

What fifteen should have always meant

You said the world wouldn’t understand

What we were or what we planned

But looking back I understand

You knew exactly what you did.

You said maybe in another life

Like the stars were out of line

Like fate was something we couldn’t fight

Instead of something you designed

You said you’re mature for your age

But the truth cuts clean

You were twenty-three

And I was fifteen.

Now I’m thirty looking back

At the girl inside that past

And the thing that makes me sick the most

Is how you dressed it up like that

Because at twenty-three right now

I know exactly what I’d do

If a fifteen-year-old looked my way

I’d walk away.

Not walk her through.

You keep saying we were wrong

Like blame belongs to two

But one of us was still a child

And the other one was you.

And God I hate that phrase

“You’re mature for your age.”

You said maybe in another life

But I’m done believing lies

It wasn’t fate that crossed the line

It was you deciding not to try

You said you’re mature for your age

But the truth won’t bend

You were twenty-three

And I was fifteen.