When You Are No Longer Young

I hold my prefrontal cortex with the shame of

sinking, water lilies seeping from my lips into the grey-green

marsh I call (uselessly) 

home.

My mind hisses with the strain of too many canned-up voices

saying

That to yearn for something that will never be

Is the dream to touch the stars

and bring them back to this grass-scented earth,

whole and safe and

unafraid-

impossible like children are impossible.

Time is that thing that will never

be turned

back, forwards, sideways

so i pretend these memories

exist,

present and unstilted like the tick of the clock

and drown in 

age-old youth.