When you’re youngest, it’s simple

So simple.

Green trees and blue skies

Hand paintings Mom put on the frig.

Fearing the thunder, I cannot sleep.

When you’re younger, it’s simple

So simple.

Sashaying in the new fashion and painting your lips,

Walking to school to get through the day.

Fearing my future, I cannot sleep.

When you’re young, it’s simple

Still simple.

Deadlines approach with banal predictability

Sampling wine with delicate kisses.

Fearing for my path, I cannot sleep.

But time passes without mercy or care,

Desperately snatching the Youth

from my body and killing

What innocence was left.

When you’re older, it’s not simple.

Not simple at all.

The rhetoric of actions, the deep rivers below the soul

Overflowing with emotion.

Fearing for others, I cannot sleep.

When you’re wiser, nothing is simple.

Nothing is.

The tears of others burn my heart, my chest pounds in

Pain that I cannot stop. I yearn to reach

And take their pain, embracing them.

But my arms cannot cure and my words do not effect

Change.

Nothing is simple.

Fearing for everything, never will I sleep.