YeahJustaSolivagant

Can I dream for a few months more?

"Mom, am I still young?"

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 a few more months.

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.

"Am I still young?"

You don't answer.

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.

But please Ma,

Lie to me.

Tell me I have time.

Tell me the alarm isn't ringing.

Just five more minutes.

Why do you cry, my little dove?

Did you get enough love, my little dove?

I ask you this because the sound you are making is a wet malfunction in the throat. You are folded into the corner of your room, knees to chest, and you look so terrifyingly aerodynamic as if you are preparing to fly away from the reality of being human.

Why do you cry, my little dove?

Is it because the world promised you a feast and gave you only crumbs?

I look at your shoulder blades, those wing like ridges trying to cut through the silk of your skin and I see the malnutrition of the heart.

You are starving my sweet silly dove.

You have been pecking at the concrete hoping for a seed or a worm, hoping for anything that tastes like tenderness.

Did they not feed you?

Did they look at your iridescent neck, your soft, gray innocence and decide you did not need sustenance?

You cry because you are full of a hollow wind.

You cry because you offered your plumage to the butcher thinking he was a collector.

You thought that if you were beautiful enough, if you cooed softly enough, the hands that reached for you would be gentle but hands are rarely gentle, my love.

Hands are cages. Hands are traps.

Come here, my little dove, come here.

Let me look at the damage.

Let me smooth the ruffled feathers of your ego. You are shedding the hope that kept you warm in winter and now you are naked against the frost.

"Did I get enough?" you whisper, the tears sliding down your beak, down your chin.

No. Of course not.

You were never meant to be full. You were only meant to be eaten.

So cry my love, my dove.

Weep into the pillow until the feathers rot.

I will sit here and watch.

"In felt anxious and impatient, like everything around me was moving in slow motion while I was trying to sprint ahead. I wasn't sure why. It took me some time to put my finger on it, but the reason was simple:"