Squint Against the Sun and Enjoy Sleepless Nights

Location

Under the stars I feel most alive,

While suburbia sleeps.

I lounge under bridges,

Inhaling sweet nicotine,

Exchanging stories with the scum of society

Whom candidly suffer from delusions of grandeur.

I'm always the punchline

To a tasteless joke.

But as long as I'm laughing,

The Moon keeps on knowingly laughing with me.

 

As a child

I lived under the Sun's control.

Those cookie-cutter houses and perfect little families

To which she graciously gave all her love...

They got to me.

All I had ever wanted,

And mine it would never be.

Inadequacy become my closest friend and sole ally.

I tried so hard,

On the Sun's good side I hungered to be.

I begged that she would teach me,

But her lessons were spurned by hate.

Chapters dedicated to loathing the people who stayed up all night,

Only to sleep under her daily reign.

Keeping lighters in their pockets,

Causing her jealous flares,

Because the Sun truly believed that she was the only flame.

They stood indignantly when it was demanded they take their heads out of her clouds,

She spat,

“They don't deserve to be on top of the world”.

And the folks who drove their shitty cars too fast,

The Sun would lend them all her glare,

“They haven't earned the right to fly”.

Those spots she'd leave behind my eyes kept me up all night,

And despite valiant efforts,

I could never dream of the things I yearned to dream.

Even awake,

My mind was preoccupied thinking over all the things I needed to do,

A better person I needed to be.

The Sun convinced me that dreams were meant for those,

But those

Were not me. 

 

I got older,

As all people do.

My life changed,

As all lives eventually will.

In doing so,

I stumbled upon

Time.

The most fascinating beast,

Who can morph virgin minds,

Into complex and beautiful thinkers.

Tomorrows philosophers,

Brilliant imaginators,

He spoke to me.

His words came from somewhere between my mind, pen, and paper.

I wrote his musings until I knew enough to write my own.

Spurned from those words came my visions of things and places,

The very things and places I had before sought not to see,

It was they who formed the landscape of my newly found fantasies.

 

Time told me the truths of the Sun.

He said that I should bask in all her glory,

Which I had rightfully earned,

For she cannot take her light from someone whom it deserves.

 

A brief interlude,

My own words to the wise,

Or perhaps a plea.

When the Sun tries to turn up the heat,

Keep your feet going,

One in front of the other,

To the beating of your heart,

March on.

It's well worth the burn,

To say that she will never again get the best of anyone.

May that pain serve as a reminder to move ever forward.

Never stop,

Never give in,

Never cower behind the trees.

May your scars be honored,

Not shamed.

 

From there Time said,

“For so long that you feared the Sun,

Did you ever think to love the Moon?

Even out of pure spite?”

Ashamed,

I shook my head no.

But with a wide grin,

Time introduced us,

Proclaiming our similarities,

While explaining the Moon was relentless in support,

Just too shy to speak.

On the days when my spirits reached an all time low,

(Of which there were plenty),

In a desperate move I would plead to the Sun,

Yet my calls would perpetually fall upon purposely deaf ears,

And behind the horizon line she would drift.

Wordless in his defiance,

The Moon rose to stand behind me.

 

You cannot know where you're meant to be,

Without the retrospection of where you've been.

My own scars have long since healed,

Still they refuse to fade.

Now under the Moon,

The rest of this town tucked away safely between their Egyptian cotton sheets,

I find myself with the people I formerly promised myself I'd never know,

Unmistakably it's with them I'm supposed to be.

So many semi-familiar faces from a past life greet me,

Plastic smiles and a happiness behind their eyes that speaks far from sincerity,

Ask me "Where have you been?"

My eyes shift up to the clouds,

I know that behind them sit the stars,

And watching over me is the Moon.

Wordlessly punctuated with a flick of my lighter,

While the heel of my boot presses down harder on the gas.

I take solace in no longer being a designated lamb.

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