In the corner of memory, a shadow clings,
A child I once knew, tethered to strings.
The laughter was soft, the light dim and gray,
A fragile illusion that time tore away.

The crayons once danced, their colors a song,
Now faded to whispers where they don’t belong.
The games that we played, the dreams in the air,
Are ghosts of a life that I can’t find there.

The house is the same, but the walls seem thin,
They echo with secrets we buried within.
A voice that once soothed now cuts like a knife,
A mirror reflecting a stranger's life.

I built castles of sand with the tide at my feet,
Each wave a reminder of things incomplete.
The stories I told to the stars at night,
Now crumble to ash in the cold daylight.

Where did you go, little version of me?
The one who believed in what eyes couldn’t see?
The world you imagined was wide, full of glow,
But the years took their toll, and I let it go.

I hold out my hands to the child I knew,
But they pass through the air, as if I’m untrue.
The weight of the present drowns what’s been lost,
A childhood paid at adulthood’s cost.

So here I remain, in this hollowed-out space,
A puzzle undone, a life I can’t trace.
And though I still search for the child I’ve been,
I find only shadows of who I am within.

I blinked, and the life slipped through my hands,
Like grains of time’s ever-falling sands.
The days I once held, so golden, so wide,
Are whispers now lost on the rushing...