April 7: Magic

I'm searching for MAGIC:
hiding and smiling, moving and grieving
the songs and the sea - I'm walking, learning,
falling and crawling, marking out stars on the
blackboard of sky until I touch them all - touch
them all, their fiery eyes and flaming tails, distant
conversations and categorizations, I need you to know:

Magic comes easier when you're a child -
if you want it, it wants you right back, embraces your
footsteps and your shadows, nudges your elbows when
you tremble, and lights up your windows with shafts of
sunlight and love. Books were my magic - I read hundreds,
and filled the shelves of my mind with the kind of hope
that's hard to find as you grow older and

books grow sadder.

I'm searching for magic - people wish they could go back
to being children, but really, I'm okay - I'm searching for magic
and bloody hell, I'm going to find it, I've learnt a hundred new words
and a hundred ways of thinking, I'm taller and stronger and less afraid
of strangers, my eyes look less silly behind this pair of glasses, and
I'm sure I can do it, I'm sure I can. Isn't this what we work towards,
a goal and an aim, ambition and creation, most of all reason?
When I say MAGIC I want no sparks, I want no dragons and
no wands - all I need is reasons, unbelievably starry nights and
heart wrenching poems, winding conversations that tell me,
HEY
life, life really is, really is
worth living. This moment
really is, really is precious.

I always thought
this kind of magic
would be easier to
find as I
grew
up.

SO WHAT IF IT ISN'T
the struggle is real but so is the flaming,
fierce, ferocious fire that rages in my belly.
I will fight the ravines that will one day
stretch my skin, I will hold a hundred happy
moments in my calloused hands, and when
age hits me like a tornado, I will hug it.
I will have lived well enough.