1992 - ...

Ten childhood memories later, and you're no longer holding grasshoppers between cupped hands.
You forgot what you named your shadow, why you sword fought with it and pirouetted around grand oaks just to be sure it stayed near.
People snicker when you count on your fingers, they laugh when you count on birthday candle wishes and dandelions breathed goodbye.
People wonder why you hopscotch on railroad tracks when a train is just ten minutes away.
Because it hasn't called out yet, you want to reply.
Because it hasn't whistled and there's still a distance between risk and innocence.


Ten childhood dimes poorer, and you still wonder why you're not rich.
You were once queen of your own sandcastle, you once found a whole dollar by the gutter with no one around to claim it.
Your grandmother gave you a golden chain with a heart-shaped clock dangling from it, and it pumped minutes without veins, made a little ticking sound like a heart beat.
But it never lived, it never breathed, so it wasn't worth a thing.
But around your neck, it turned sunlight to gold, and it was sure pretty.


They could teach you how to tell time, but they could never teach you what to tell it, and so you never knew what to tell your Time Heart when it hummed away minutes
in the morning, kept the hours running through the night.
They could teach you how the Earth keeps spinning and that's how life goes on, but not how it turns nights to gold and days to quicksilver.
They could tell you why the lungs shrivel and why muscles grow weak, but why your favorite childhood pastimes and ambitions grow old remained a mystery.
They could show you how to write your name, but nobody else's, and I think that's
why I've stopped greeting my shadow.
I just let it stay a while and fill the space where something else had once been.