Ink Stains

All bad news is sponged up so easily.
Like black ink traversing white fabric.
In frustration; I smudge it across a yellowed wall,
Where pictures of us in innocence have hung for so long.

As I finished making a mess of things, I heard,
We are always going to know the bad.
But, why not also know the good?
Why can’t our world be like it was when we were little?

Even you are still a child; your eyes betray you,
Every night together we still learn something new,
Your face sparkles and shines like aluminum foil,
Like the kind that wrap my lunch in elementary school.

Once, under the boughs of an old oak tree,
I carved our names inside a heart.
Until the bark comes back again,
That tree will spread the cheerful news.

Good news is the best news, let’s listen.
People constantly look for the darkness,
Why can’t they touch it without absorbing it?
I just want to see smiles, and feel nostalgia.

Well, I feel that old kind of feeling when you smile.
A feeling that takes me home, Shenandoah.
Wide opened fields like golden seas,
Blue Mountains like giants on the horizon.

You laugh like my mother, chimes on the wind.
Her laugh could realign my world, and heal me.
No ink stains can blacken my clouds anymore.
All the painful truths I’ve learned disappear to the back burner.

When I wake up on the floor of your bedroom,
I feel like a kid again, you constantly remind me,
The world is still full of wonder, and newness.
Everything seems fresh, and anything seems possible.

We are all children, beneath the same sky,
We are all lost, still learning how to fly.
We all say things that make our loved ones cry.
And once we’ve got it figured out, we die.

Even when I’m nothing more than bones,
I can still look back and my throat will clench.
Throughout all the visits to the hospital,
Throughout all the turned backs, and bad news.

I’ll know I was always alive, free,
And the world was a wondrous place that we could see together.
We don’t have to stop looking,
We’ll never find all the goodness, it’s limitless.

So, with pots on our heads,
Blankets on our shoulders,
And sticks in our hands
We will explore every inch of our backyard and beyond.