The Human Stages of Life

By Michelle Seucan

A collection of poems, letters and photographs detailing what it’s like to go through the five stages of human life—childhood, adolescence, adulthood, aging and death—from the perspective of a young girl.

In Our World At Least (Childhood)
Remember when our watermelon pieces
were rocks from Venus?
And there were alligators waiting for us
at the bottom of the slides
We chased the ghosts of dandelions floating above the Old Man’s well,
and wished for snow in October
Did you see the signs as well?
Were you, too, dreaming the dreams I dreamt?
We shared our dreams on your bench
under that tree
which your grandfather cut down

We loved that tree
and we loved the boys
that lived over the bridge
in the middle of Nowhere
For they killed us so softy, so lovingly
How could you forget the flowers we picked?
And the times we climbed through their windows
to give them to the Older girls?
How could you forget our special place behind her house?
We held hands as we crawled under its broken fence,
running through the land of Old People
They stared at us,
but we didn’t understand what that meant
at the time

We were kings,
we were wizards,
we were children
in our world at least.

A Girl (Adolescence)
A Girl
Ties the laces of her older brother’s shoes
the only proof she has of his existence

A Girl
Stares at a man with a bouquet
walking by himself at night
She wonders if there is more to life
when the skin of a stranger
brushes up against her own

A Girl
Swinging on swings for six years now
dreams of a world out of her reach
An ideal world of freedom
where spring afternoons would be spent
lying on a strange Italian beach 
somewhere, sometime in 
an alternate reality

A Girl
Is at peace with her lonely soul
as she lays her head on the grass and laughs
hysterically
at her own stupidity
because she knows
it is too late
for the world to change
So she sits back
and takes photographs of it
in an attempt
to freeze time
as she creates
her own little universe

Never Marry an Actress (Adulthood)
Never marry an actress
They are sly mermaids
and the poisonous blueberries
fed to you by witches
They are the lake you find
in the middle of nowhere,
where people fish for dead creatures
and make love under the moon
They are the mountains you paint in autumn,
when everything else seems like a dream

They are the song
that makes you feel nostalgic
for things that didn’t happen yet,
hurting your soul so badly,
you wish
to die
They are the best friend
that you only see
during summer
and the best friend
that you never see
in the summer
Never marry an actress
Be one

The Small Man on the Meteor (Aging)
A long time ago, I fell in love
With the first meteor I saw in seven years
On that meteor lived a small man who asked me,
“Is there hope? Is there a God?”
I knew he was testing me
Seeing if I spoke the language of our ancestors
I thought of a book I read years ago,
About the things that make one think about God
So I smiled and told him tales
Of a world inhabited by queer beings in love
A world of utter beauty and human peace
The small man was so touched
That he jumped off the meteor
And fell blissfully right into the oceans of Earth

The Night the Old Man Died (Death)
Screams ache under the stars
from three girls running towards the ocean
They enchant others through song and dance
while wrapping themselves with vineyards
Covered in flowers that were thrown onto the Old Man’s grave
by his own old man
Do you know what the mermaid sang on that cold night?
When the broads rose their hands to the sisterly moon above
Pledging their allegiance to the aliens within them
then running off to the Mad Hatter Man
The nightingale sang alone that night,
while the tailor finally found his golden ring
The fairy dust reached the drug lord’s eyes
just as his mother dreamed a lover’s life
The night the Old Man died

Process

I’ve always viewed the human experience as a delicate flower of sorts: it starts out as a little seedling planted in the Earth by two hands, watered everyday and nourished by its surrounding environment with everything it needs to grow. That’s childhood. As time goes on, the flower develops into a premature beauty, not adult enough to be seen as wise but definitely not young enough to be considered a baby; this is adolescence. It’s a rosy and unpredictable beauty, for this flower has reached just a tip of its potential, yet still has a lifetime to keep growing. With time, this adolescent flower transitions into a full-fledged floral entity, being blown around the world by different winds and planted in different gardens by different people. All this experience and accumulated wisdom represents not just the stage of adulthood, but also the process of aging. The flower is born, grows, blooms, flies around the world, wilts and eventually dies, for that is not just the cycle of life, it is also the nature of the human experience. I wanted to express these universal emotions in various creative mediums, which is why I chose to captivate each stage with different poems, letters, designs, and photographs through a personal and feminine lens.