Prompt: Today’s challenge is to write a poem that starts with a command (https://www.napowrimo.net).
The command I am starting with for this effort is one I heard from my mother at a very young age: “Act Your Age, young lady!”
The First Kiss
“Act your age, young lady” my mother said
to me one night when I had secretly kissed
my first crush under a tree, sitting on the curb
in the dark like a couple of love birds gone to roost.
Not only my first crush, my first kiss! Two kids
stuck together at the lips like a kissing bobble.
Not breathing, just kissing, not knowing how,
but feeling the passion of a first kiss.
“Act Your Age,” she might say to me again but
this time for a different reason. So, I wonder
to this day what it means to “act your age?”
Jacquelyn Markham 4/19/2022
Poet Voice 