The carnival was asleep
It had been for years
A stiff frozen Big Top
Unused gelato machines
Fading in streams of color
Like a crying watercolor painting

Falling asleep on the Ferris Wheel
Was never my intention
It had been standing still
In the heart of the abandoned circus town

We travelled through it
Like cells of life
Permeating
A ghostly forgotten world

Our eyes twinkling with the wind and stars
Our feet living inside our boots
Stepping over
Clotted patches of dirt

And then we began to climb upwards
To the stars
Reaching to the sky
I climbed high enough
Trying to brush up against the ink black sky
Fireflies dancing in circles
The moon's craters smiling to me
In the most genuine kind of smiles
The lopsided and distorted kind

And we climbed upwards
In the frozen ferris wheel
We climbed like ants
We crawled through its spokes
Like we were suspended in a giant bicycle wheel
We climbed into faded pastel passenger cars
In our tiredness
We fell into them
Our thoughts suspended
Like the sky's stars
Hanging in the sky
Resting

We were in the most abandoned place
Yet we were breathing life into it

And then
The ferris wheel began to turn

Even the most abandoned places
Even the most ghostly
Can be awoken

By life

And with that
The Ferris Wheel began to turn
Joining the earth in its motion

And we each fell asleep
All of us
In our own faded passenger cars
Separate but connected
Turning with the world

Like a lullaby
Gently being rocked to sleep
By the Earth
Under the midnight sky
Earthlings, all as one

~JL