Nineteen

I am writing this one month late.

The candles came in a box of twenty-four. Nineteen went on the cake.Five stayed inside.

Eighteen has a ceremony.Twenty sounds like a threshold. Nineteen is quieter.

It is an age that does not announce itself. It passes almost unnoticed, somewhere between what has already begun and what has not yet found a name.

At nineteen some things already feel familiar. Others are still impossible to imagine.

There are people not yet met who will become important.Places that one day will feel like home.Choices that now seem distant and will later feel inevitable.

Perhaps growing up is also learning this: life does not arrive all together.

Some things come early. Others take years.

And not everything still unopened is something missing.

That evening, nineteen candles were lit and blown out. The smoke disappeared quickly. Someone cut the first slice. The plates moved around the table. Life continued, as it always does after the moments we call important.

Five candles stayed in the box.

Not forgotten. Not late.

Simply waiting for their time.