makes me feel weightless. few times did kids like me get the chance to gate check the baggage of growing up too fast. to reclaim the innocence deferred and childhood lost. to free oneself of that despondent gravity pull. even temporarily. sleep was the only real pause button. i was hungry for dreams of charting the stars and moon jumping. but the sand fairy lunch lady plopped nightmares onto my tray as a substitute. carving nightly curlicues into my head for years, the brain wrinkles spell out one damned boy. i said please take this young life of shouting storms, working without pay at the warehouse, and the household dangers of being myself. and give me a field of daisies instead. give me back my dolls. repay me for these lost, precious minutes i’ll never get back. all the isolation tears i cried would have drowned me in my top bunk. all gone when i mounted my favorite pony on the pizza parlor merry-go-round. among the birthday parties, player piano, and arcade games chirping, the poor children try to lasso each other with imaginary lariats. that dear centrifugal force, hanging off the side, eyes closed, going around, up and down. soaring through earth’s attic into the cosmos on a wooden horse. riding as close to the sun and stars as i’ll ever get. this is my spaceship, and this is my spacesuit. i’m heading to another solar system to see if the prophecy of a sacred youth is honored there. when the good dreams don’t come, you have to steal them as often as you can. like fireflies in a jar or grasshoppers in tiny cupped praying hands.