Through the Eyes of a Child

Looking up into a summer’s midnight sky is like gazing into a blanket of diamonds.

It’s beautiful and breath-taking…

Stars scatter across the endlessness like pixie dust.

I am only a child.

When I lay on my back in the cool grass, staring up at a dazzling curtain hugging the world, I can’t help but cry.

I cry because of its beauty.

I cry because of its majestic unknown, its quiet innocence, its radiance in a world gone dark.

When I stare up at a midnight sky, all I feel is bliss.

I am only a child.

Through the eyes of this child, the world is magical.

Blissfully unaware of an entirely new, magic-less world that will envelop me when it deems me "fit".

Yet, at this moment, when I look up, I feel an awareness that exceeds those older than me in every way.

When I look upon the millions of stars in the night sky, I feel as if I am…everything.

I am myself.

I am the soft grass.

I am the trees gently swaying in the warm breeze.

I am the deer with cautious eyes glowing from within the forest.

I am a star in the midnight sky.

I forget shallow troubles that had worried me earlier that day.

When I lie there, under the starry veil, I am innocently, blissfully happy.

I always had a favorite star.

I always managed to pick out the tiniest one I could find and name it.

I always named it the same name: Adrian.

I suppose if everyone stopped one night and raised their eyes to the glistening heavens above, there would be a silent moment of complete happiness. 

No one would fight, no one would worry, and no one would be sad or lonely.

They would see the world as I did and find their own favorite star.

But something as fantastic as that only happens in the mind of a child, I suppose.

Sooner or later, I stand up in that serene field, get on my old bike, and ride home before my parents notice my absence.

And with me fades the cruel illusion of perfect harmony with everything in the universe.

As the stars shifted and the year moved along, I would always still find the tiniest star named Adrian.

It didn’t matter if it was a different star the same size as the previous one.

It was still my Adrian.

As I grew older, I came out to watch the sky less and less.

Eventually, not at all.

The world that scorned magic had finally blinded me.

I no longer had time for the midnight sky, for looking up at the stars, for Adrian.

I had grown up.

I fell deeper and deeper into a darkness I couldn’t escape from.

Then, one night as I grew restless on a summer vacation in New Hampshire, I decided to walk outside.

With my hands tucked deep in my pockets, I slowly shuffled along a dirt path outside my hotel.

My eyes forever downcast.

Suddenly, I was standing on the top of a small grassy hill, overlooking a small lake surrounded by pines.

The midnight sky’s reflection sparkled and winked across the lake’s glassy surface, ethereal and endless.

Slowly, I raised my eyes.

I had never seen such beauty.

An infinite black sky dotted with millions of white diamonds gleamed like something almost unreal above me.

My eyes almost instinctively shifted to the tiniest star I could find.

Adrian seemed to wink hello.

That night, the tears streamed down my face like never before.

Even after all the years of ignoring him, forgetting him, not believing in him, he had stayed.

He had always been there, just waiting for me to return with a hopeful, mystified gleam in my eyes as I watched, cheering him on as he crossed the sky each year once again.

That night, I realized that I was no longer the child I had once been.

However, while I had shed the innocence and blissful ignorance, I had never forgotten to look at the world as a spectacle of pure beauty.

I realized that even if one grows up, one can always look at the world through the eyes of a child once more.

This poem is about: 
Me
Our world

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