When I was a kid I used to play hide and seek a lot,
take it from me, the biggest tree isn't the best hiding spot.
When I was a kid I also used to smile and cry a lot,
I guess it was part of my game, disappear behind a tree,
avoid anyone who was seeking and let my brown eyes run
like the sun casting its lights over the cliff of a waterfall.
I remember the first time I had met and talked to Sarah,
she caught me playing hide and seek as I usually did.
I remember thinking it wasn't fair that she had found me
because there wasn't supposed to be anyone seeking.
She had asked me what I was doing behind the tree
before I could answer she told me to count to thirty,
so I counted. Being a kid; counting to thirty was difficult,
it was intricate enough to count to ten or even twenty
but thirty felt like an eternity to a six year old.
I told her I wasn't going to count because I couldn't
and I wouldn't satisfy the request of a complete stranger.
This was way before the stranger is danger days
where you could play in a park with a forty-five
year old man and no one would bother wondering why
a forty-five year old man is sitting at a park.
These were the days where the dark sky doesn't signify
a time to come back inside the house but a time to explore,
explore the vast stars that sat above our heads, explore-
explore the core of the earth with a plastic sand shovel.
Sarah explained to me that I was wasting time behind the tree
that she could see in the future and that I will be happy.
I didn't believe her, I asked her how she could have known
and she told me that you reap what you have sown
and to a kid that was in itself a mystery, mainly because
I didn't know the words reap or the word sown.
Sarah was about eleven when I first met her
I've seen her a few more times since then but then
became moments gone and breezes of wind blown away.
I remember Sarah playing hide and seek with me
she said I shouldn't hide behind a tree because it's too easy-
it's too easy to find a kid hiding behind a tree,
it's too easy to see that the kid will pick a tree.
I asked her how can I do things differently,
how could I ever get my chance to win at hide and seek,
I remember the weeks followed; perfecting a strategy
of running and dodging the seeker in between trees,
interestingly enough the fact remained that I still lost.
I glossed over my different plans, wondering if I can
find a different way to win this game.
I asked her how come she could find me every time
and she'd remind me of her age, but to say that-
a tortoise is wiser than a human because of its old age
is to say that a page written a decade before
could tell of how people are feeling today.
It just wasn't the truth that remained in my brain.
I told her she was lying and that she was just trying
to hide the fact that she was cheating by not counting.
When I was a kid I used to play hide and seek a lot,
take it from me, the biggest tree isn't the best hiding spot.
When I was a kid, I would always used to cry a lot,
but as I grew up that was something I tried to stop,
and I succeeded in most instances.