Run as far and as fast as you once did in your new red shoes.
Then c r a s h to the ground and talk to the teddy bears over the tiny-tea-set.
Listen to the hollow reverberating ping as the child’s ceramic cups bump together with all the delicacy of an ape, as the smallest bear says something you you completely agree with.

 

Embrace the crunch of the tarpaulins below your platted and knotted legs and remember that this is the only grounding that will ever matter. This is the only ground you will ever need to grow upon... this piece of crisp blue plastic, commandeered from the log pile, on some grand and all encompassing mission for a dry bottom and a suitable sea scape on which we can play pirates and mermaids.

 

Allow yourself to kick up the tufts of grass that offend your eyes as you dart between trees and tumble through flowerbeds. Remember that all great adventurers are fuelled with Saturday afternoon sun, sticky chocolate-rolos and pink juice.

Remember that it is ok to allow yourself to spin sometimes, to not just turn, but to let go of yourself... and spin fast in the open space. And to cry out for all to watch as you feel your thin little legs tangle themselves together; forming one of those leg pretzels you know will eventually topple you.

 

Recall when you were always yourself... But remind yourself how once... you would be an Actor only because you were dressing up to fulfil your end of our friendship bargain.

 

Not because you were being forced to be fake for those you have no business loving. Like in the past years spent at ‘big school’, where the tides of teens pushed us into parts we were never longing to play as children.

 

In my mind I only see you stride around wearing your finest silky wizard’s cloak. With your fingernails still caked in mud and hair still housing the twigs of earlier escapades. You giggle, despite yourself, lodging free the cookie crumbs that collected at the corners of your mouth. That’s how you’ll remain. Always to me the same.
...

You’re taller now.
Bigger too.
You don’t need me to open the jars or reach the tap... you thought, when you changed that you didn’t

need my renegade imagination to guide your big boy adventures. I know now that’s ok.

So do you.

 

As our farmyard frontier closes and our future adventures fill with cider and stress... remind yourself it’s alright that the childhood chapter has become its own technicolour picture book, to thumb through when you forget where you came from. The sunshine of Saturday afternoons has been captured into a night-light; a constant comfort to light the nights of our long lives.

 

As our new identities have formed apart, like precariously piled blocks, only the acceptance of our loss will prevent the topple.

Forgiveness of the children that grew apart will form the adults of now.