You are the sea.
You are cruel.
You are cold.
And I love you.

the rain came today
it came violently
a sudden scream for freedom

it caused trepidation
as it pounded into
the dusted surface
of the Earth

then it faded
into a whisper
a whisper only the trees
and dry souls could hear

I thought if I could swallow the stars
I’d be as beautiful as the evening sky
I tried one night    with fireflies
They burned my throat
Their legs striking at soft flesh
But my skin did not glow
No moon crawled from my eye sockets
I was left with corpses in my stomach
I soon learned I would only ever be
A cemetery

Tonight, I spoke into the darkness,
No stars to light my way,
       The black void all encompassing

   My words drifting up in ribbons,
          I waited for something, anything to happen

              I felt a rumble that was akin to ripples emanating from a drop of water hitting a puddle

        I was small next to the impossible,
And when it spoke back, it changed me
      
        The blank canvas of stark black was pierced by blades of light,
    The sky becoming a shutter in a rain storm
           Blowing open and closed
       The words came and wrapped themselves across my body in its entirety
        Constricting my air flow

             I felt myself shatter
  An implosion of feeble glass
       Ricocheting through a skeleton of paper, reflecting the brightness above inside ripped skin

                I was nothing.
                I didn't exist.
                I floated in an incomprehensible place that had no end, no walls

     No ceiling or floor

            Just illumination in every direction

                    I opened my eyes
  
    And was blinded by an incredible radiance

      I shut my eyes tight and swatted in front of me
        My hand struck something metal and I yelped in pain
          
          I shot up and stared downward
    Towards the desklamp unplugged on the floor
        
          Breathing heavily, I sat upright in my bed,
                 *Struggling to pull away words that had already sunken in

Once when I was young,* I was told you could swing so high you'd be able to just *fly away.  

   I learned early on
               That not everything we're told is true
               The fantastical can sometimes amount to a pile of plastic bags scattered in the wind
                    The end isn't always happy and there's not always closure
      Punctuations are more often question marks than definitive periods
                And looking for a definite explanation took prevalence over allowing our imaginations to fill in the blanks.
         Play time was replaced with study time,
             And before we knew it, it was time for work
                      We strayed from the playgrounds of our youth,
      Never returning to the top of the slide, we'd hit the ground a bit too hard to keep the enchantment of seemingly endless possibilities going
                                              Carriages became pumpkins long before midnight,
              And the school bell rang before we could finish our fun
                       But to tell the truth, sometimes,
     When everyone else has gone inside, back to the real world, full of logic and banalities,
         I sit on the old swingset kicking my feet
    Hoping it will let me *soar