I Realized I Was Happy and It Scared Me

"I Realized I Was Happy and It Scared Me"
Rich Ives

Something had to have been here before me
for here to be here, so sometimes
I say I'd like a little silence,

to see if I can discover what it was,
but what I really want is quiet, in which
you hear just a few things

better, which is not silence,
in which you hear one thing
Again and again and again

and it's not even there.


(This was Slate's weekly poem, and something about it hit me...replace "Happy" with "Growing Up"...)