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.

Female, Alternative Pop, Pop-Rock, Trauma-Pop