Of Love and Troughs

You once loved wild
You once loved free
And after the fire burnt you to cinder,
Steadily, you grew weary.

You never knew
Where the crazy flew,
Nor when it had already found itself
A mad new avenue.

Well, you found love again,
But this was of a different kind.
The kind that doesn't mess with your mind.
This love is calm.
It seems to find relief
In knowing that you reached home,
Not in how hard or oft you came,
The kind that doesn't put you to shame,
Before your friends, for the sake of a jest.

Be that as it may,
You still still carry the wild in you,
Don't you?
The validation of the few -
The blessed the pretty the fearless -
Which seemed to matter more
Than all the rest
Of the world combined,
Including the voices that fell behind,
The ones you knew inside
To be the ones to be trusted.

But where's the fun swimming close to shore?
Where's the thrill without the deep?
The visceral pull of a great white's teeth,
Or the sad squishing of your heart by human feet?
But all that's done now.
You're an adolescent no more.
Your hormones have settled,
As have you, on a waveless beach.