There once was a boy
Who smelled his future in the pine leaves.
He kicked up ice like it was glass, weaved cleverly
Through the loopholes in the rules with easy laugh,
Staining windows ecstatic with his smile,
Working up a masterpiece of a life
That made the soil soften as he pelted across it
Hiding from rain.
That boy had his difficulties, like the October sky
Has its fogs and sunken clouds
But the sunshine loved him then, loved his olive eyes
So he was always forgiven in the end.
I imagine that life felt, all at once,
That this angel had taken too much from it.
After all, you can't be beautiful and happy at the same time.
Perhaps Fate saw him as a thief masked in evergreen,
Picking life's treasures up like cheap marbles
And running away with them as fast as he could.
It did not matter in the slightest that he created good
Out of triumphs and charms that could have gone to waste;
Easy life was over, and the maliciously fanged beast
That forced itself into his old friend's place
Did not enjoy golden smiles or childlike contentment.
So they took his father,
Like the eastern wind takes the sand from the desert
And spits it into the traveller's eye.
That was, I am told, the beginning of the darkness.
I met him, idly wandering on my own path, a few years later.
The pines had turned to ash and smoked instead,
But light still sweated off him in waves
And not even the thickest coat could conceal it.
He turned liquor into the Immortal Elixir
And sadness into an emotion I could have lived in forever.
He turned bored, grey words inside my mind
Into a rainbow of colours I could use to paint his portrait
On a notebook page.
I lost him a little while ago, and to this day I'm not sure what will become of him-
But I will forever hold a grudge against the Universe
For taking him away from me too early because of passion
And for concealing the bright happy boy
With the death of a loving father.
Life isn't fair.
Had the Little Prince lived on Earth, maybe life would have done the same to him.
