The boy with the stars in his hands, thought he had the future in his grasps
But as if he had cupped water it poured through his fingers as time to the past
& as he flipped over the hour glass he found a hole making time running too fast to handle
Gasping for breath from underneath of a strangle hold, of, what if, and what could have been, & But if onlys… trailed off into a whisper of what should have been…

When I was a child, when I was the boy gazing into the heavens blazing trails around the moon and between the stars and it seemed that all horizons were possible, and my parents told me with all the honesty that they could muster through the crusted lies, that I could be anything I wanted to be, that nobody was better than me, that as long as I had my eyes on the prize that no force on earth could ever stop me

All the while knowing the full breadth of the truth and how it would come crashing down upon me, crushing my ribs as it suffocated the last exasperated breath of hope from underneath my bruised and swollen chest, as the fight drained from my eyes like a lion that has been chained so long the bars on the cage were the extent of its visual range

You don’t do that kind of damage to a child who is but learning to spread their wings, because, although it seems improbable, and damn near, down right, impossible… that child might grow into the being that takes flight and ushers in a world of change

So they lied to me, intentionally, to set me free