Life comes in increments of sixteen weeks where each week she composes list after list.
Wastes away inside with textbooks and tests instead of spending the day in the sunshine.
Her mind wanders, up and away, into her dreams where she lives a different sort of life.
As others are falling into soft slumber in the night’s silence she is kept awake by thoughts
that make her weary of war and weather both. She prays nightly for dear Mother Earth
to take her people and bring them alive with singing in the streets in the dead of night
and to rock them to sleep with sweet lullabies as stars step away and day breaks night.
The girl looks at this life of hers and after some time in deep thought composes another list
to keep organized and to help her find a steady place to plant her feet on this big, big earth.
As she struggles each day with textbooks and tests and longs for the warmth of sunshine
work, school and a sad excuse for a social circle overwhelm her mind, spirit and thoughts.
Each day her mind grows heavier and she continues to wish for a different kind of life.
Somewhere where the sunset lasts a little bit longer. A sort of sweeter, simple life
where the streets are filled with the sound of music all day and through into the night
and where children can be children longer so that when they come upon the thoughts
that fill the heads of adults they won’t do as the woman living in a child’s world has and list
ways to escape to a place where she can do the dreamer’s dance and live in the sunshine
on the streets where music fills the air and smiling faces take up all the space on earth.
She desires to recycle her trash and plant trees in the salty spring air that occupies her earth
and to better herself, the lists say so, because there has to more than what’s seen in this life
that comes in sixteen week intervals filled with textbooks and tests. It seems the sunshine
would do all of us some good. Maybe the moon will allow her time to dance away the night
but it isn’t meant to be tonight. The halfway point shows eight weeks crossed off using lists
and eight more until she can run into the sunshine and not be consumed by her thoughts
because she’s no great philosopher. She would rather spend time in play than in thought.
Nobody wants to be lost in thought when they’ve yet to explore this mighty, mighty earth
with her blasted basalts, blue skies, and bubblegum scented paper on which she makes lists
after which the businessmen will be able to continue on with their polished, plush lives
in this white world where all that matters is green. But she, she’d rather dance the night
away where there’s music in the air and people walk the streets with pockets of sunshine.
In a land where there are no bad days and everyone carries a pocket full of sunshine
Is where she wants to exist. Trapped in a world where she escapes into her thoughts
Because nobody knows how silent and still the streets become when day turns to night
How many children go hungry and how many people don’t know their place on this earth
They want another chance at redemptions, a new beginning in a place to start a new life
And yet when everything else is over, she finds herself with nothing but crossed off lists
Here she stands at a crossroads left with nothing, only her beloved lists
She’ll have to tear a new path and find herself in this life
So she can make it to where they sing in the streets and dance away the night