Counting your heartbeats since you were a child,
one of these days you’re bound to lose track.
Like the hat box your mother had filled with old photos,
faded, still memories begin to come back.

This had been the place where you’d spent all your summers
before you drifted away and your face started aging.
Those stars were the ones that you’d stared at each evening,
each morning the only real proof of time changing.

These cobblestone streets could never contain you
which is why you had mocking birds take you away
to that new sort of world where the clocks tick much quicker
and each person forgets who they are every day.

This is the time to be vaguely reminiscent
of ice cubes and lemonade at a quarter past eight.
These are the stars that you pray to each evening,
to go back to those summers of waking up late.