The Ghosts of My Childhood Dreams

I.

In the attic of memory, dust motes dance

Through shafts of amber light, where chance

Has scattered remnants of those days—

Paper planes and plastic rays,

Cardboard swords and cotton clouds,

Dreams that once drew laughing crowds

Of younger selves, now grown and gone,

Like shadows at the break of dawn.

II.

There's astronaut boots made of tin,

Silver-painted, wearing thin,

That walked on moons of backyard sand

In galaxies I held in hand.

Each crater was a kingdom vast,

Where alien winds forever passed

Through purple trees and crystal caves—

Now just footprints time erased.

III.

Remember when the garden wall

Was taller than the trees were tall?

When every shadow held a door

To worlds no one had seen before?

The rosebush was a jungle deep,

Where tigers made of twilight sleep,

And every leaf could be a map

To treasures in the thunder's lap.

IV.

Beneath my bed, a monster dwelled—

Not fearsome now, but then, it held

The power to freeze my racing heart;

We've grown so distant, worlds apart.

Sometimes I miss its yellow eyes,

Its phantom breath, its lullabies

Of creaking floors and whistling wind—

A terror that became a friend.

V.

The wooden swing still chains suspend,

Though rust has made the metal bend,

No longer flies to touch the stars

Or breaks through atmospheric bars.

Each push once launched a thousand tales

Of pirates bold and singing whales,

Of rescue missions through the sky—

Now just a creak, a metal sigh.

VI.

The treehouse rotted long ago,

Its planks returned to earth below,

But still I feel its sturdy beams

Supporting all my summer dreams:

A castle keep, a rebel base,

A shuttle launching into space,

A wizard's tower touching clouds—

Now wrapped in memory's misty shrouds.

VII.

The blanket fort's collapsed and packed,

Its walls of wonder long retracted,

No longer shields young knights at rest

Before tomorrow's greatest quest.

The flashlight's beam no longer writes

Secret stories in the nights,

No whispered plots of grand escape—

Just folded cloth, a different shape.

VIII.

In puddles after summer rain,

I used to see whole worlds contain

Themselves within those mirrors bright,

Where upside-down clouds took their flight.

Each ripple was a story told

In water-language centuries old,

Now dried and gone, though sometimes still

I feel their stories fit to spill.

IX.

The cardboard box that was my ship,

My time machine, my rocket trip,

Has long since joined recycling's stream,

But sometimes in the edge of dream,

I feel its controls beneath my hands,

As stellar winds sweep alien lands,

And every star's within my reach—

A lesson childhood tried to teach.

X.

The dress-up trunk's old clothes are dust,

Its mirrors clouded over, rust

Has claimed the costume jewelry's shine,

But still there runs a golden line

From what I was to what became:

Each role I played, each made-up name,

Each life I tried on just to see

What other selves I might could be.

XI.

My crayoned maps led nowhere real,

But showed the paths I used to feel

Were possible, when every door

Could open to a distant shore,

When every closet might contain

A passage to a magic plane,

When every shadow could conceal

A world more true than what was real.

XII.

The action figures, plastic small,

Once giants in adventures tall,

Now lie in boxes, lost to time,

Their painted features past their prime.

But in them lived such mighty deeds,

Such answers to unspoken needs,

Such battles fought and victories won—

Now silent in the setting sun.

XIII.

The tire swing's rubber cracked and split,

No longer holds the dreams that lit

My racing heart as round I spun,

Believing I could catch the sun.

Each rotation was a year,

A lifetime, as the world grew clear

Then blurred again in endless dance—

Now still, devoid of circumstance.

XIV.

The building blocks are all dispersed,

The castles that they once immersed

In morning light have tumbled down,

Each tower toppled, every crown

Of childhood's architecture grand

Returned to time's eroding sand.

Yet sometimes still their shadows rise

In sunrise-golden morning skies.

XV.

My storybooks, with pages worn,

Their covers faded, edges torn,

Still hold between their aging leaves

The first dreams that a child conceives:

Of talking beasts and magic rings,

Of heroes bold and dragon wings,

Of quests that end in victory sweet—

Now pressed like flowers, incomplete.

XVI.

The finger-paintings, crude and bright,

That once held worlds of pure delight,

Have faded now to gentler hues,

Like memory when time subdues

The vivid colors of the past

To shades that better fit and last

Within the gallery of years—

More precious now through mist of tears.

XVII.

The telescope that used to show

Vast cosmic ballets, high and low,

Now gathers dust, its lens obscured,

Though once it held me well assured

That mystery dwelt in points of light,

That wonder filled the depth of night,

That questions led to answers true—

Now clouded by time's residue.

XVIII.

My diary's lock has rusted shut,

Its pages yellow, secrets cut

From context, floating free and strange,

Like leaves that autumn winds arrange

In patterns meaningful yet lost,

Each earnest entry tempest-tossed

By years that smiled and hurried past—

Now silent, though their echoes last.

XIX.

The music box no longer plays

Its tinkling tune of younger days,

When every note could cast a spell,

Make magic that no tongue could tell.

Its dancer stands in frozen pose,

Mid-pirouette, as silence flows

Around her like a gentle stream—

Now still within her crystal dream.

XX.

These ghosts of dreams still drift and weave

Through days that make-believe believe

Were simpler, truer, somehow more

Alive than what time holds in store.

Yet in their fading, they reveal

A truth more precious, somehow real:

That wonder never truly dies,

It just wears different disguises.

XXI.

For in the closing of the day,

When shadow-light begins to play

Across the walls of who we are,

Those dreams still flicker, near and far,

Still whisper of what might have been,

Of doors unopened, paths unseen,

Of possibilities that wait

Beyond the edges of our fate.

XXII.

The ghosts of childhood dreams remain,

Like starlight through a window pane,

Not lost but transformed, grown and changed,

Their essence differently arranged.

They haunt us still with gentle grace,

Remind us of that sacred space

Where all things once were possible—

And maybe, still are possible.

XXIII.

So let them dance their spectral dance,

These phantoms of old circumstance,

For in their movements we might find

The keys to keeping wonder kind:

To seeing magic in the rain,

To feeling starlight's sweet refrain,

To knowing that in death and birth,

Dreams hold the measure of our worth.

XXIV.

And maybe that's what growing means:

Not losing touch with childhood scenes,

But learning how to carry through

The wonder that we always knew,

To forge from fantasy and fact

A world where dreams remain intact,

Where ghost and truth together play

In twilight's ever-changing gray.

XXV.

So here's to all the dreams that fade,

To every game we ever played,

To worlds we built and lived between,

To everything we might have been.

They're with us still in ways we know,

In seeds that present moments sow,

In mysteries that still unfold—

In stories waiting to be told.