When We Were Young

Narrow sidewalks over which we used to balance over pretending it was a bridge that held all our hopes and dreams Chasing butterflies on our little bare feet over the dew-kissed grass hoping they would take us to secret lands of desire Hearing the deafening roar of planes and twisting our necks so quickly they might just snap to look at the flying creature hoping one day we'll fly too with wings strong enough to take us to the universe now those wings have holes in them caused by the disasters of the world Those days when we thought our parents were all-knowing deities who weren't scared of anything only to realize now they're just like us who put on a mask to hide their true souls Thinking that all the clouds embodied some object or the other and when they moved so did our imagination now my imagination dead lying like a corpse in the corner of my room and that the man who lived on the moon disappeared every fortnight to cast a magic spell on all of us That the seeds we accidentally swallowed would grow into magnanimous trees in our stomachs instilling fear in our minds about the smallest of things Wishing on dandelions hoping that are impossible dreams come true Only to realize fairytales were all wrong and that everyone doesn't get a happy ending Everything seemed so simple when we were young when we didn't know the real face of the world when all the things we knew were nice and no evil existed at least according to us where we lived in a world of complete ignorance yet curious about all the little things we saw please take me back to those beautiful chapters of my life rewind them so my mind can relax and be serene instead of the constant panic it is in now