Can I dream for a few months more?
I am kneeling at your feet, the kitchen floor is cold.
"Can I dream for a few more months?"
I know I am supposed to be waking up now.
I know the world is standing outside the door holding a helmet and a shovel waiting for me to get to work.
I know I am supposed to harden. I know I am supposed to turn into something solid and useful, something that can carry a heavy load without breaking its back.
But Ma, I am still so soft.
Look at me, I am still made of water and milk.
If you cut me, I just bleed fear.
I am asking for an extension.
Just until the winter is over.
I want to stay in the dark part of the morning where nothing has a name yet.
I want to pretend that I can be anything, an astronaut, a poet, a ghost before the sun comes up and forces me to choose a shape.
I want to lie in the bed of my childhood and watch the dust motes dance and believe that they are angels.
Don't open the curtains. Please.
Don't tell me I have to be a grown up today.
Don't tell me the war is starting or that my body is a machine that is already dying.
Let me be the kid for one more season.
Let me be the thing that needs to be held not the thing that does the holding.
You just brush the hair off my forehead and your silence is the loudest thing in the room.
It says, my sweetheart, you were never young. You were just waiting to be broken.
Tell me the alarm isn't ringing.
Just five more minutes of the dream.
