I could never paint with a steady hand,
creating a piece bright enough to light a dark city was like tying shoes without laces
I briefly remember my first grade year.
My heart, beating blood red as roses, told me to bloom as far as the sky could reach.
In art class, I’d scribble some old beaten down crayons across printer paper
Hoping to create sunshine from nothing but sticks of wax

It felt like only yesterday my friends and I didn’t know
our fingers from our thumbs, or our neighbors from our critics.
We were too oblivious to understand that it was impossible to perform
a concert to a crowd facing backwards.
Too frozen in a field full of snow,
to realize that our creativity would soon be abolished by the opinions of society.

Society, a word I didn’t hear until around sixth grade
I quit drawing flowers because the heart that once told me to bloom
warned me that my petals would soon be picked apart by the people standing around me.
Crayola boxes, once filled with spirit and embodiment, somehow lost their color.
Playing with bubbles in the backyard until the sunset had turned into endless nights
In the kitchen studying textbooks until my mind could no longer function
My luminous peace of mind now dulled by what they call “reality”

Yesterday, I threw all of my pennies in a wishing well.
My knees now bruised from entreating the world to hold their prisms up to the sun,
hoping they’d discover the hidden hues that Imagination may transfuse,
The philosophy, of one’s youth.