Twenty Five Thirty

"All this drawing and painting will end,"
she remarked
when I showed her a new birthday card I'd made.
"By the time you are thirty,
these golden silver papers
and drawings and watercolourings
won't interest you anymore,"
she declared
with the knowingness of someone
well beyond the hedge that thirty seems to draw around people's minds.

"Really?"
said I
(horrified at the thought that silver things would no longer hold the promise of youth anymore)
"How old do you think I am now, eh?"
I asked her blankly,
half expecting another solemn statement,
a rebuke
or a slight.

"Well you're only twenty one,"
she replied,
to which I exclaimed
"Ha! I'm twenty five
and I haven't given up this drawing-painting,
middle of the night fiddling just yet!"

She smiled submissively,
un-believingly,
as if twenty-five-year-olds
can't possibly be doodling and collecting
and collaging everything so rampantly
without thinking about thirty
and the trifles
that wouldn't matter by then.

But I smiled triumphantly
as if I'd never give up my magpie collecting and making and colouring sketch pens.