The Day I Turned 22

This is a poem entered in the Neo Twiny Jam, with 500 words or less.

It's styled nicely, with beautiful fonts and illustrations and transitions and some music.

It's mostly just a poem, the feelings someone has for their 21st birthday, The freedom is in what order the poem is explored.

I liked it overall, but a lot of the enjoyment of a poem is either in symmetry or purposeful asymmetry. But there was a bit of unevenness, like rhyming 'skills' with 'skills' and varying between exact rhymes and almost-rhymes in a non-symmetric fashion; and some of the lines were hard to fit into the meter when read aloud. However, the sentiment was strong, and those features I described as lacking may not even be desired by the author, although I feel like they could be introduced with some mild revising.

At the brink of a new birthday passing, one often reflects on where life has taken us, and this year’s celebration is different from the previous one. Passing certain milestones may add new challenges, like having to find a new job or your own value in society that may not value your skills, not having the time to (re-)connect with family and friends, or feeling inadequate for not having done certain things.
The entry is filled with sadness and with a hint of blasé-ness covers many things a lot of us worry about. The simple style of writing adds onto the sincerity of the text…
The audio file and images add a filter of melancholy to the whole.