youth is a butterfly

i remember dancing with you in old playgrounds

    your love is like water
soft rain    dapples my face until it shatters; it
forms puddles in concrete—
that children can’t help but    jump in

i remember drawing families in sandboxes
    and i know we were in
    social exile—
too scared to play sports,
    but we were in
oblivion

and now my glasses
are less foggy
but i wish they weren’t
because then,
    i wouldn't care how i looked,
    i wouldn't care about words i couldn’t hear,
all i would care about was the next
time i got to talk with you.

i saw the creases in the corners of your eyes when you smiled

but your face is an     afterimage
and my memory has been washed away with
         tears.

we were puzzle pieces
        that once
fit together
        perfectly.

time is sandpaper

your love has frozen over.
    water into ice,
i slip
and all is red.

give me back the days i wasted
i wish i     never cried
“mother, i’m not beautiful”
the child inside me died.

childhood was        soil— it
seeped through my hands.
“go be a kid,” they said
i’d never understand.

    the youth in me
receded and all is
     gray;
i used to see the world like a painter—
i don’t remember those days.

what was taken from me
would be gone for
                evermore.

my friend,
youth is a butterfly
watch as its    wings enchant you
    delicately
it will land on your finger,
    its monarch patterns are so vibrant
almost jarring
but you are in its trance—

until it escapes,
moves to another flower,
deceives another innocent soul.

i suppose losing the butterflies of youth
produces the greatest poets,

i suppose only the young can answer.