an aged sort of youthfulness

When I woke up this morning, the house was still asleep. No water was running, no one was utilizing the hallways, or filling the rooms with sound. It was just me, and since houses can be rather out of sorts first thing in the morning, I decided to let it sleep awhile longer. I laid in my bed and made shadow puppets on the wall, much to my own amusement. I made an alligator, and a cat, an emu, and my crowning glory... a llama, complete with a rather oddly shaped tail. At one point a little brown spider crawled across the wall, and was strangely pursued by a bouncing bunny. These times of simple play redeem me, yet so often I choose to forget my call to be a dreamer, because our society really has no place for its idealists. And only its finest artists can make a living as such. The rest of us must suck it up, throw on a suit, and enter the 'real world.' It's times like these when I feel all at once really young and really old. I am just a little thing, with bright red lipstick smeared around my mouth, tromping around in high heels, womens size 8. I'm only playing dress up, pretending to be grown up. My childishness is painfully evident these days. I know so little, it seems. I also feel so old, a bit worn out. Like one who has seen the heaviness of life, and is content now to sit on the porch and watch the dragonflies, waiting for the promise of perfection. I've wandered a lot for someone my age. I've watched African women serve chai to a crowd, bending low from the waist in a humble bow, something like a mountain bowing down to the grasses. I've walked by Cuban soldiers roasting whole pigs by the ocean, getting ready for another government sponsored feast. I've become the playground for twenty of India's children, abandoned, abused, diseased. Each one I pick up like a stone and carry. Partly because it is beautiful, and partly because weight is meant to be borne, so it might as well be me who carries it.

Standing now under a tree, sipping liquid mango and sugar from a juice box, I do the only thing I can. I take the stones and add them onto my wall. My wailing wall, with numerous names and grievances stuck in the cracks for cement. This is an alter to my age. And then I begin to draw all over it, with imaginary sidewalk chalk. Pictures of redemption and peace. Birds and trees and beautiful things. And this is a tribute to my youth.