Seventeen
By Ashley O’Hare
I wish I could once again
be seventeen years old.
I was wiser then-
I did more than I was told.
Now, with a wounded heart
and a weakened spine,
I struggle to play my part
and fight for what is mine.
My dazzling future
fizzled out;
destroyed
before my eyes;
blew up like
a firework,
now drowning in the sea
of my wasted potential.
Potential I lost at
seventeen.