My Childhood Was A Dream

This one is for nostalgia,
I'm standing here to give my childhood memories a voice.
But first off, know I was a child who had night terrors.

I remember waking up to the fear of my basement.
I remember waking up to being stuck in a dream,
terrified because I was still condemned
to an Oregon coastline saltwater taffy store,
fleeing on a moving circular conveyor belt
from a cheetah hot on my heels.

I remember struggling at the bottom of my stairs
to find the courage to face the shrieking masked figure to my left.
And I could move about as fast as a fly in honey.

I remember when the kid next door became a werewolf.
My pet rabbits' fur was ravished across the front gate.
The moon was full, and I'd never seen it sicker.
Polluted and sagging, it emitted a dying street lamp hue
that bruised the light vacuumed night sky.
Atmosphere sucked away my shallow breaths,
and compressed my smothered lungs.
I couldn't tell if the noise my bare feet made on the cool,
dew strewn grass was muffling the silent sulker's steps.
But I was outside,
and I knew he was coming for me.

I was also a dolphin,
swimming through an untouched mountain lake.
Water slithered and streamlined across my leathered back.
It flexed with my kicks into an arch
and crested into the chilled mountain air.
My feet had evolved into a tail that began
to kick to the rhythm of my soaring spirit.

My mind would then drift into flight
and carry me through my neighborhood.
Sometimes mental effort could lift my body like the lost boys
into a sky that was too blue to be true.
Eventually my mind would seep into the realization
that none of this was real.
So I admired it that much more.
Walking would never
fill the need to feel a thrill,
and only flying would prove to me
in the pale 5 O' clock light,
that Timp was the most beautiful thing out there.

I remember a hill behind my house
that was covered in
some footprints of kids two grades older than us
that we thought were gangsters,
dirt that got in our shoes,
waist-high weeds,
holes we dug,
forts we made,
shovels we lost,
dinner shouts from mother dearest,
and views of Utah lake smeared in oily sunsets.

You see, this last dream was my favorite,
because I actually lived it.

And don't we all float through this dream called
childhood?