the last child

eighteen years old and this
wide-open hole seems to be closing rapidly;
the expansive, unalive part of us
called imagination
is cramping up and amputating its limbs,
making space
(the only thing it's allowed to create now)
for life to set in.
with every turn around,
it seems to hit the ground
and recently it's having trouble getting up.
not quite favored by the aging,
closer-to-adulthood kids any more,
'cause it's hard to imagine
when all that we're handed
is hard fact after fact that we've landed
ourselves in a pit,
they say, "get over it"
when we wish we could go back and relive this,
and change what we did
to deserve this constriction.
I've been holding on tightly for a while
and after this time, I'm still
digging myself out of this pile
of these facts after facts that will always be futile
to an eighteen-year-old girl
who stands as the last child.