Edges Magazine Issue 26: When I Was Young

EDGES MAGAZINE Issue 26

July/Aug 2001

WHEN I WAS YOUNG

Lee Robertson reflects with us.

The watery rays from the silvery moon pierce the still small voice within; stifling and silencing it, causing it to sound so bereaved and bereft.
Fading away like an unattainable goal into the stillness of the night, the night that is so powerful and haunting, an invisible blanket of blackness that covers this God-forsaken town tonight.

he stars all locked up tonight, incarcerated within my brokeness.
Once it was so bright like a Summers day, the flowers dancing to some invisible beat in the fields of green that I so loved as a child. A stunning array of colours to tantalise my innocent being.
I ran wildly and freely across those fields from which arose a tirade of sensual scents, laughing hysterically as petals painted my never tiring feet.
Innocence; the dream of the guilty.
I lived it once, rolled in it; crushing it beneath my hyperactive soles as the sun penetrated my not yet tarnished frame.
As free as a bird back then, flapping my life-loaded-limbs towards the sea-blue sky that held oh so many mysteries for one so young and innocent. That beautiful eternal ceiling that somehow kept those gigantic spheres of cotton-wall magically suspended before my pain-free eyes. My sight not yet blinkered; tormented by the misery that living brings. Standing stone-like, suspended in my masquerade.

My neck craning skywards trying to understand all of this beauty at the same time. Innocence; the dream of the guilty.
But tonight I'm drowning in an ocean of guilt, my innocence vanishing like my pleasant childhood memories. Struggling to catch my last breath, my icicle like fingers clawing at whatever it is that I still haven't found. Desperately stretching, gripping, tensing, grasping; a condemned man going to the chair.
I cry tears of sadness now, big salty ones that roll down my pain-dented face into my parched mouth.
A couple pass by me now, looking down upon me, there previously contented faces contorting into disgust before my now tear-stained eyes. Showing me the look of the ignorant.
Did they not once live in innocence?
Did they not once trample beautiful blooms beneath their fanciful feet? Have they not stared wide-eyed up into that beautiful abyss and wondered how life could be so magical and majestical all at the same time?
So happy that misery wasn't an option.
Of course they have.
We all have!
But look at them now, walking off hand in hand, clinging to the dream that once was. Their fingers entwined like those blades of grass that I once danced among so innocently.
They don't even turn back to glance at me.
My heart feeling crushed like those beautiful petals lying crushed in the warm Summer sun. Memories! They always come back to haunt me like a curse.
I pull my weather-beaten blanket over my aching head trying to shut out the devastation and destruction that is my best friend now as I lay down upon my stone mattress.

Innocence; the dream of the guilty.