Once I was a Girl

Once next to a time, I was a girl.

She was sweet-and adoringly naive--

like the scent of spring lilacs

dangling in the dawning dew.

She lived free as flashing fireflies,

and captured them in canning jars:

for her finest, faithful friend.

They played and plotted and painted--

their eyes, bluer than the their broken hearts,

sticking together like globs of gum

on a window ledge, they wept and wished

of all they did not know, and hoped

in all that they did.  How wonderful it was,
when once I was a girl.