Childhood

As a child, Summer held me like a spell.

Pollen suspended above my head;

Dust from another world, frozen in time.

Above, there were boundless blues,

Broken only by candy-floss clouds,

Forming shapes before me,

Painting a fairytale.

The weeds felt like undiscovered shores,

The trees were the highest mountain peaks,

And I would climb and run and jump,

To new lands, Far, far,

From the reaches of reality.

But endless days gave way to scentless fields.

The songs of birds became the passionless hum of insects.

My childhood magic, rested like dew drops,

On the petals of dying flowers.

In faded gardens, I’d dig my hands into the earth,

Clutching blades of grass in my grip,

Yearning to hold time itself.

But, as I’d return home each evening,

Soil under my nails and tears on my cheeks,

The sun, exhausted from upholding childish dreams,

Hung,

Lower in the sky,

And Autumn would come.

Stephanie Macmillan

Stephanie recently left the city of Glasgow and moved back to her roots in Ayrshire. Things are certainly quieter, slower, and simpler now, giving Stephanie the chance to reconnect with the world around her. Alongside her newfound sense of home, Stephanie has felt this change of season to be especially poignant due to a number of other personal changes and wanted to create a piece which would evoke the feeling of loss you experience as you grow into your new (and nearly always improved) self.