Recently Stolen Childhood

Growing up makes you look back and realize

How seductive childhood is.

Remember all the glistening sea turtles

Crawling across the beach,

Trying to get into the water?

Remember their babies that you’d pick up

And help towards the waves?

Now, as a prisoner of age, all I know

Is I have more than one ashamed bone stuck

In my body, digging into my lungs so I cannot breathe.

I have seen the smoldering seashells

Spewing smoke from underneath;

I have seen disintegrating hornets’ nests

And heard the hornets inside scream.

How tempting would it be to go back in time

To live a perfect life without all this chaos deep inside?

Maybe it’s silly to savor the past,

But that was my childhood,

And I’d do anything to take it back.