Sunflowers lead me back to childhood when I had to look up, up, up to see petals waving and pressing high against the bluest sky. Golden dreams were the clouds' outlines. Heartbroken and jaded, I quietly plead, "Sunflowers, lead me back to childhood" when despair was never larger than sidewalk shadows or the lightning bugs' nighttime shows.
Summers of healing turned to winters of deep sleep. As I learned grace in slowing down, I'd let memories of sunflowers lead me back to childhood, sipping elixers of nature's berries, herbs, and flowers. Sighing in these silent years of distance and stunted dreams, I don't mourn challenges and losses along the rock-strew road. Grace comes quietly and with her gentle invitation to let sunflowers lead me back to childhood.
Image by Martin Torrez
Wonderful! I love every line. What a way to paint an irreversible picture of adulthood! It also reminds me of a hip-hop hit song in my country, “Adulthood na scam,” a Pidgin English way of saying, “Adulthood is a scam.” Here, I see the poet question a phenomenon that can’t be changed, yet painting the reality of childhood so beautifully and so vividly the poet could make do living in its memory.