On Reaching for the Stars
- from the lifetime of a toy
You’ve forgotten now
of the days you took me to the moon,
your feet teetering back and forth
in proud possession of the galaxies.
Giddy upon gifts galore,
as Naïveté pampers you with a limitless domain,
you claim Invincibility as boldly as
the resolution booming
in your teeny bones.
So onwards we conquer all the planets,
pitter-pattering across the stars
that burn on nothing more
than grand ambitions running
fantasy bound.
In a distant haze,
are the somber nights
you clutched me tight,
consumed by fever dreams,
cruel night terrors,
the birth of Doubt.
Your heartbeat thumps against my ear,
heaving with that helpless dread.
Invincibility taking its slumber
as your tears find the fine strands of my hair,
the stars are burning a little less brightly tonight.
Before we know it,
Your meticulous mornings spent
brushing the knots out from my hair,
become hasty drags that tug
a little too hard.
The careful smoothing of my smock,
a tiresome nuisance.
I watch myself become a burden,
until even burden proves too generous a word,
as I watch you forget.
By sweet sixteen
those galaxies you claimed so resolutely in your name,
dimming and quiescent, are long abandoned
in exchange for the passing bliss
of cheap intoxication.
You grow fond of Inebriation,
seducing you with its temptations
of escape and momentary solace.
You’ve held Doubt close,
and together you mock far-away tales
of the moon and the stars,
of resplendent hopes,
reducing them to infantile daydreams.
You look at me now, with hollow eyes,
Invincibility bid you farewell long ago,
While Anxiety and Depression makes itself at home
I watch in anguish
as you surrender your universe
burning out entire constellations,
a grand extinction of innocent ambitions.
You trade our trips to the moon
for pills and thin white lines
as those limitless dreams succumb to veracity.
With no goodbyes, you leave behind an entire universe,
aching with remnants
of what could have been.