When I was younger, I looked to the moon.

I gazed at the stars, I sung back at June.

Our candle burned in suburbia, a benign twinkle mirroring the stars.

Through the fog tricksters would come.

Some tall

Some small

The little ones had sticky hands and gooey minds.

The eldest would snicker like the candy.

But now I am entangled in the hustle of fall.

Righteously saved am I in the freedom to play,

Others my age will not face a new day.

Popping guns and substances, they search for the moon.

All they find is the darkness they can't wake up from.

What breaks my heart are not the horrors of spectacle,

but the plague of the meaningless.

I'm grown now, but will they ever be?