A million wild insightful fantasies

Bubble like a hydrothermal vent on the ocean floor

Feeding a thousand ideations of what I’m here for

I need grounding, we say

Well this, muthafucka, is my groundhog day

I honor those childhood friendships

We were so buoyant every midsummer day

Soccer balls, Pokémon cards, Dig-Dug marathons

Forts of stolen wood, mint-chocolate-chip ice cream

The smell of sprinkles,

As sweet green dribbled onto pink tables

 

Opening my heart to those spaces in the beginning

When all was young, fresh, and pure

Self-consciousness, longing, grasping choked that innocent play

Life became more and more calculated, willfully generated

The joyous babble of my youth,

Muzzled into a dark murmuring corner

The mind’s conquest of body in the search for truth

Ripped and distorted memory, warped the light of my child

Into sparkling fragments that only blinded my eyes,

Bound to the night

Probing the self, I put more words on my shelf

 

Tears on the carpet,

I’m alive, no mushrooms needed

I’m alive, and finally you see my mind

Yet I’m letting you go, as we follow the edgeless rivers

Bearing us faithfully home