I want to be young

I want to be an infant.

I want to lay my head on a pillow and have it sink in to the comfortable softness, warmed and comforted by the very fact that I don’t know enough to worry.

I want to smile innocently and laugh freely.

I want to take delight in the attentions of others without having the self-awareness to feel self-conscious.

I want to be two.

I want to state my opinion boldly and confidently. I want to believe in self-assertiveness.

I want to let the hedonist in me free.

I want to simultaneously want to be cradled and set free.

I want to be five.

I want to feel like I know so much because compared with yesterday I do.

I want to believe in the promise of a future that can hold whatever I dream up.

I want to dance with fairies, sing with princesses, and ride horses off into the sunset all without leaving the confines of my own imagination.

And yet 35 I am.

I’m old enough to know better. Aware enough to know fear. My dreams are not always peaceful.

We grow in wisdom as we age, and yet sometimes we cling to the nervous fears of a child even as we lose that innocence.

Our heads may not rest in peace, our minds may not swirl with possibility.

And yet we carry on. Because somewhere deep inside lies that hope and that promise and that love.

I want to be young, and yet I can’t. So instead I watch you.