Sometimes, I think.
Not too much or too hard.
It can kind of hurt, thinking.
If I could do anything, be anything. I would be a child.
A little girl again.
Whose greatest fear was the man in the moonlight.
He’s my friend now, you know.
He an I share secrets and have found that we have more in common than those I can actually hear.
He’d scare me years ago, gave my heart a lurch, as if to remind me I was still alive.
Reminding me that my child dreams were not something to get lost in.
I think harder.
It hurts to remember how easy it was.
It makes me question if it was ever real. But they’re there.
Memories.
Fat snowflakes falling, and thick blankets of snow that seemed to silence the world. The burn of the concrete on bare skin, and the swirling arms of the heat rising from the pavement.
Making my very small world seem like a perilous African safari.
I remember thinking the grass knew my feet hurt.
The cooling blades reaching out to cradle my burns.
I was more in touch with the earth then,
it seems.
Enough to reach down and thank it.
I tell the man in the moonlight these things.
He always nods and looks at me with those haunting dark eyes.
They remind me of someone I once saw in a mirror.
I am old too old to wish for childish memories.
Yet I am still too young, enough to be seen as one.
I’ve always liked those kinds of riddles. The ones that leave you questioning,
who you are.