“Poem to the Innocents We Were”
              ---after Catherine Pierce’s “Poem to the Girls We Were”

Give us back our clean minds,
those souls untouched by the dirty language of the real world.
Give us the belief in frivolous things
such as fairy princesses and shiny knights atop white horses.
The unicorns and dragons that graced our daydreams.
Give us the certainty in the choices that we made.
The outfits we wore, the words we spoke, the claims of our tall parents.
Allow our eyes to not turn dark,
accompanied by the dark smudges of restless pondering.      
Allow the windows to our souls to be clear again.
Erase the dirt of society, the pain, the reality.
An ebony streak
across a rainbow filled drawing.
As dark and mysterious as the rims of our minds.
Give us back the silly momentos of friendship bracelets made at camp
and the marks of chalk on the driveway
Staining the world with our oblivious cheer.
Give us back those straight up truths we told.
Take away the discrete lies
where the truth is strung like putty.
The end of a ball of yarn, finally exposed to you after a long painful search.
Don’t forget to add heapfulls of muddy gossip
to add to our growing distrust.
Don’t forget to remind us to look pretty,
to squeeze into strappy black tops and tiny mini-skirts, apply mascara to draw attention         
away from our smirking lips,
to forget those tie-dyed dresses
and flowered headbands.
Paired with chipper grins stretched across our freckled faces.
Pirate costumes on Halloween night.
Let our innocence return.
For it to be okay to get excited
about a lost tooth, the first day of school,
and a king-sized box of Skittles all for yourself.
Let it be okay to give your dad a hug as he drops you off.
Just because you love him, not to bribe
as you secretly sneak out to an alcohol-filled party.
Let those sticky adult secrets become unglued,
allow those daydreams to come back,
instead of guilty rated-R nightmares.
Or is it too much to ask, to return to the innocence of youth and
to be able to fly away, carefree, as we once did?