My name is Serenity Hicks and I love to write. It helps express how I feel and it seems the only way I can get my words out without struggling to explain what I’m feeling.

Footsteps I Won’t Follow

Everyone says growing up
Means becoming like your parents-
Learning their habits,
Walking the same worn paths.

But sometimes I look at those paths
And feel my feet stop.

I hear tired voices in the hallway,
The sharp words said too quickly,
The silence that fills a room
When love should be louder.

And I wonder
If growing up means
Carrying the same storms
They never learned to calm.

They say time slowly turns us
Into the people who raised us.

But I don’t want the same anger
Living heavy in my chest,
I don’t want to repeat
The echoes of broken moments.

Growing up, to me,
Means choosing something different

It means learning from the cracks
Instead of living inside them.
It means building softer spaces
Where voices don’t have to shout.
Maybe growing up
Isn’t becoming them at all-

Maybe it’s standing
Where their path ends
And choosing
To walk another way.

To find out how YOU can win next year’s Poem of the Month and Creative Quarterly challenges, sign up for The CHS Writers’ Circle with Miss Hodge.