Of childhood Christmas, I remember
hope and honesty,
how dashing the lights shone.
how pure the snow lay.
A wish to Santa Claus:
Tomorrow, I want to be the grownup
I always dreamed about.
Carry my own suitcases
Fly my own plane
Taste and see the world ––
an endless, bright landscape.
Be the surfer
I once watched onshore.
Tell the stories, feel the
freedom of living on my own.
I’ve grown up, waited
for that tomorrow which has not come.
Sixteen years old, I understand now
that childhood is but dreams,
sunshine and polaroids scattered, lost
like an infant’s memory.
I’ve found a felony in age ––
my once guardian, former shelter of youth is gone.
Now I am shaken awake, left bare,
pushed into a crowd.
People? Strangers? rub chaos, confusion, disappointment
onto me –– skin to skin.
Nothing is as delicate as childhood.
I wonder how a boy
grasping the rusted ends of hope
should act, when the world sells phony dreams.
To be a grownup is not
chocolates and beach days
But work, fatigue, pressure.
Dear adolescence,
Take me where you want.
I have no direction.
Tomorrow, I wish for
youth’s return, its energy
vivacity ––
daring, like the waves I ride
dreamy, like sunsets I see.
Adulthood isn’t my wish.
Not growth, not responsibility,
merely freedom and bravery
to venture out
blissfully ignorant.
Waves crash on, rhythmic; I hear the water
move back and forth, seesaw like time,
a witness to the stories of life ––
Tomorrow, I shall be the grownup.
Today, I hold fast to a boyish heart.
