Strawberry Lemonade Dreaming. Poem by Leah Ayliffe

Strange how one day you can be sitting there thinking the ugliest of shades could be as magnificent as a golden sun
While another hour passes into midnight, and suddenly the beauty of a rose turns into nothing but its thorns

One minute I am obsessed in their adoration of my messy mind, the next I could care less about the attention of their direction. It could be a sick addiction. This is how it is with me every time. The classic wanting what you cannot have.

Drinking strawberry lemonade on the boardwalk, memories of my friends and I drunk under the stars, moonlight glowing on the lake –swinging and laughing at the park. Telling him I no longer am hopelessly in love. Lonely liberty.

These things don’t really connect to now, but it’s part of who I am from those dark yet thrilling high school times. I’m just trying to piece together how I came to be, how I am still so similar though no one would recognize me as the same.

I guess I will give myself credit, I am no longer dependent or a slave for love. I have evolved to the other side of paradise where no one can hurt me, and there is no love but to be in love with my own world. I share but in kindness and daydreams, genuine laughter through sad days. A melancholy song or a dance with my favourite friends. I share my hope for everyone to not be afraid to find happiness in their truest desires, no matter how absurd or unusual they may be. I believe that you can be anything, anyone you always were but too afraid to be.

I miss eating ice-cream over the bridge. It tasted like freedom.

“Are you ok? ”
“With regards to..”
“Just generally”

Someone once told me I was a lost princess in search of paradise. Or my heart is learning that life is not art. The latest analysis of my state is that I am happy but somewhere sad, sad but content and happy. Their descriptions are not wrong.

I am the happiest sad girl to walk the world. Despite being confused and sad to the core, I see beauty and love and goodness and hope. Everywhere.
Did I say despite?

Rather because. Because of such dichotomy the intensity of all things is magnified to a point of unfathomable dreams and nightmares. I am in love with them all.

So you see, generally yeah, I’m alright. I choose to be here inside my head and create whatever it is I need to survive out there in the real world some upper class fool has designed. I am happy; I get to see magic in places no one else may ever find.