we used to dream the biggest dreams we used to dream the biggest dreams

Photograph

Child, you come to my door and enter without knocking, with dead flowers in your small sweaty hands as love presents, mocking the poverty of my heart. Always you bring me gifts, many-coloured stones and cakes of mud, white shells from the beach and stakes from my own flowerbed, while you, small and pensive, watch me with your blue eyes of wonder. You come without knocking, as love does, and still I grump and sigh whenever your fresh storm rip apart my bungled web of self-importance. But when your slight arms quietly slip around my neck, when you pleadingly and awkwardly say three little words with a depth you don’t know, but simply are, I burn with shame for every time I dared to use them myself; child, richer than anyone I ever knew or heard of.

Child, you come to my door and enter without knocking, with dead flowers in your small sweaty hands as love presents, mocking the poverty of my heart. Always you bring me gifts, many-coloured stones and cakes of mud, white shells from the beach and stakes from my own flowerbed, while you, small and pensive, watch me with your blue eyes of wonder. You come without knocking, as love does, and still I grump and sigh whenever your fresh storm rip apart my bungled web of self-importance. But when your slight arms quietly slip around my neck, when you pleadingly and awkwardly say three little words with a depth you don’t know, but simply are, I burn with shame for every time I dared to use them myself; child, richer than anyone I ever knew or heard of.



Tags: ASOPa sense of place

January, 2010