Age.

We live in a time and place-where age doesn't determine how old you are. 
Where it's the way you get to where your going and not how far--you'll never get that puts you into good grace. 
If you see the world through child's eyes that's when you visit natural highs.
But...here's the catch, life it's self is a selfish and greedy wretch.
Adolescence flirts with the innocence. It makes you believe you are nothing without experience. 
Toy chests were turned into art sets, into bookshelves, which transformed into cluttered desks. Stacked with papers about religion and politics. Things our minds are supposed to have read but that we blindly nod and accept instead. 
So we set ourselves aside and start associating declarations of beauty with forlorn lies. Cherished games became childish things, playtime is now unattached with no strings. We purchased our own diamonds, forsaking candy jewelry. We forgot that games were something we couldn't always win. And the flaws we saw in our selves grew so big that there was nothing else we could see.
We were sickened by who we turned out to be.
We thought it was our fault. That hand holding wasn't enough to please the gods of experience. So we sacrificed  our firsts, refusing to be caught unprepared, we stood hoping that this would be enough to make expectation relevant. 
It wasn't.
So we betrayed our senses waking ourselves from daydreams with painful pinches that allowed us to feel anything. Dandelions stood proud, waiting to be picked. We trampled them-wasting wishes that we thought were weeds needing to be fixed. 
A layer of dust protects our playing cards, our teddy bears, and the wonderment in our hearts. They are the things we now hide under our bed, since we've become the monsters we once fled.