When I was younger...

Sheer Genius

As children, we all played our little games, and even when things were bad, we found little spots of sunshine to warm our toes in. We ran fast, and played in the grass, breathing hard (sometimes coughing up a lifetime's worth of our parent's smoke), and laughing until we couldn't breathe.

Then we got a little older, and realized that our friends could be so much more and so much less to us. When we were on the down, amber liquid courage would pick up our hearts and make us stronger, and green weeds would make our pain dull.

We got older still, and we thought we knew enough that we could tell each other what we thought. We thought we knew enough that we could be right, and that we could make things right. We were wrong.

By the time our bones stopped growing, we sat there, wondering where all the sunshine had gone, replaced by mugs of booze and the acrid clouds of cigarette smoke.

The sunshine was still there, it was the childhood that was gone.

So now, humbled and aging, we walk through the grass, our legs no longer able to run, and our lungs to dry and hard to laugh. But we still warm our toes in the sunlight, as small as the spots have gotten. We sit, and we talk of times long ago, when we used to run through the grass, and laugh.

And then, with children of our own, we leave the green fields and the past behind. Breathing hard, we push into the future.