wonder.full [a sestina]

as I child I was never told “no,
its impossible for someone to fly
and land feet first in fields of strawberry
blossoms and dinosaur bones
to spend weeks weaving intricate daisy masks
and running up mountains ‘till you collapse”

sometimes when it snowed I would collapse
and greet the people I pretended to know
the snowmen I built would never fly
but remain earth-bound, covered in strawberry
tinted handprints where the cold penetrated my bones
while the world became invisible under its white mask

when winter no longer would mask
the grass which appeared with the season’s collapse
I’d venture outside, into the suburban inferno
where the ice cream trucks would dance and fly
proclaiming the delights of its strawberry
sorberts and line the pavements with little mouse bones

I dug my toes into the sand, trying to reach the pirate bones
which were buried along with pearl mirrors and sand dollar masks
beneath the white hot orb, we collapsed
my friend and I, we were never to know
any better when the seagulls would above us fly
and we made them burst, their insides like strawberries

autumn always brought the death of the strawberry
blossoms and we made necklaces out of the bones
we found beneath the tragedy masks
in his attic, the boards of which seldom collapsed
but we trod carefully still, no
matter what, because unlike in my youth, I could not fly

my mother always said that time would fly
and that responsibility would replace strawberry
stains on my fingers and the little mouse bones
but adulthood did not slip on easily like a mask
and hope for an airbourne ice cream man never collapsed
and I never took a liking to hearing “no”

[[see, no one has ever seen time fly
by like strawberry fields on a road of dust and bones
and I'll refuse the mask of logic until the day I collapse]]