Oh How It Shimmers

I touched the clouds with my cotton candy lips

whipping the sky with my laughter.

I dreamt in color.

And that bold, beautiful world

would shimmer just so.

Just as quietly and assuredly as any world would want to,

if it had a choice I mean.

And I knew even as a child,

that we all had choices:

Some big, some small,

some seemingly mundane,

but they all made up that world

that I thought was pure beauty.

Then I woke from my cotton candy dreams,

older with eyes that looked to steady ground and not just the

l i m i t l e s s sky

and the world that seemed to shimmer before my eyes

dimmed and my lips became cracked from the strain of trying to smile

when there was no reason to after all.

That young girl who saw the world in color and shimmers,

who touched the sky with her small hands,

Lost it.

And haven’t we all been there?

Where we see the world,

see our possibilities,

and tie it to another?

Then look and believe that together, our bound forevers will make the world sing once more.

And haven’t we all become untethered from that beautiful longing?

And the person whose hand found yours has disappeared behind black skies, where the clouds mute to dim whispers and you are there still, loudly muttering your loss to no one in particular.

And the young ones out there whipping the sky with their laughter don’t know what will come when they greet the world with more than a smile. I wish to God I could shield them from that.

Especially young girls with cotton candy lips, swirling laughter and small hands- always reaching for more, in a world that used to shimmer just so.