The violet sky stood bashful against the dimming horizon. Stark trees sprang from the ground, flourishing in dots midst the blushing stars.

Street lights flicker on, reminding me of how mom didn't have to yell for me to come home, the lights whispered it to me, carried in the caressing breeze.

I'm reminded in the spring, of the day me and my friend ran into the pelting rain and jumped through puddles, soaking our bodies in high pitched laughter and impending colds.

I'm always reminded in the summer months, how everyone including myself, preferred water from the hose over water from the tap. Or how we'd run rampant through the field behind my house, screaming against the heat.

The broken sidewalk reminds me of the time when we all thought we were cool for trying to smoke cigarettes we stole from our parents.

I fell in love with patches of clovers more than that of a boy's selfish smile. I was more in love with the act of collecting lady bugs as pets rather than holding a hand pushed into mud.

I preferred shallow swimming pools over the small voice of a boy asking me if i had other friends like them. Or how the beam of the sun was better than the beam of a slender, pale face with blue eyes.

Blind and innocent children, we fell in love with things we could touch or splash in. We fell in love with the beautiful colors and characters in our favorite Saturday morning cartoons. When we weren't playing cops and robbers, we were lost in a world of SEGA and Super Nintendo 64. We were infatuated with a world that never altered, but our vision cleared of.

We were saturated in a time where our only big worry was making sure we got our recess time. And when the smog cleared we realized our biggest worry was making our parents proud.
And it seems that it should be the other way. We should be proud of the kid our parents raised.
But ultimately, the monsters under our beds became the demons in our heads.
And the kid your parents raised
slowly became the kid you wish your parents never had.

There won't be a day in my life where i wish i could fall in love with the sound of an ice cream truck, or the animals at the end of my bed again.