Youth has lost it's sweet seduction,
Yellow lemon heads have grown hard and sticky,
No longer resting upon our eager tongues,
But instead gathering lint in forgotten pockets.
Dreams of astronauts and ballerinas
Only exist in dated children's books
And hospital emergency rooms.
There isn't room for foolishness anymore,
Not here. Not now.
Childhood has shrunken into a tiny ball
That would fit perfectly into the hands
Of anyone brave enough to grasp it.
Yet, instead it has rolled off into a corner somewhere,
Out of the reach of subway tickets and smart phones and deli sandwiches and fake leather boots.
Sitting there, stagnant and unnoticed, it festers in the disregarded possibility that is life.
We all grow up and forget this,
We fall into the routine of tooth paste and parking meters and 160 character love notes,
We forget about the astronaut and the ballerina and the president who all once lived inside us,
We shut them away in our minds and starve them,
Only giving in to their innocent requests in the dark of the night,
Where time and responsibility dance hand in hand in blissful oblivion.
Ashes, ashes we all fall down.