To be a little girl again is a dream so far that it’s an indescribable feeling that I shall never reach. 

Even when eating my favorite childhood candy to replaying the many memories that lay on my soul like chicken on rice.

I can’t help but feel sadness for the dreams of a little girl that will soon disappear on September 10th. 

What a bitter day it will be. 

Oh to be a little girl again..

How I wish I could run a mile in the sunflower field that provided my innocent mind with a shield. 

To have in my grasp the great feel of what many call freedom. 

I’m not referring to the freedom that the United States Constitution granted us, but rather the freedom that a little girl felt when she never felt the worries of what the world calls growing up.

I knew I wasn’t a little girl anymore when all of the birds I knew left the trees, or when my math homework went from 2+2 to the dreadful equation of y=mx+b.

I used to be a sweet and small little girl, my mothers middle child with a pretty bright smile.

As I realize that I’m two days away from my sweet sixteen, I can’t help but miss the little girl who cries inside.

Now that I’m learning to drive on the street and that working an 8-5 over the summer isn’t for the weak I wish life didn’t go by in such a blink.

How sad that it moves so fast, but even sadder that I can’t beg God for a second chance at youth.

Although that was a small glimpse of what adulting is like I never imagined I would call myself a wimp. 

A brave young black woman at least that’s what my mind convinces me to think.

I’m now chasing after more than dreams I’m chasing after the woman my mother so proudly wants me to be. Not weak-minded or faint-hearted, but rather strong-willed and confident.

I must warn all of the little girls on the day of their dreadful sixteen that the past fairy tales will cease to exist.

A prince won’t come to you with a glass shoe, and a frog won’t come to kiss you under a star.

I promise you that in your bedroom you will wait for a man to shout “Tangled let down your hair”, but in truth, it’s your mother calling you down for breakfast before she rushes you off to school.

What a shame that I must experience my bittersweet sixteen.

But such a gift that I’ve been blessed with another year of life never knowing that growing up I had the possibility of feeling so alive.

Sweetness in aging bitterness in the memories of a little girl.