The World is Your Pants

To anyone who ever said children should be seen and not heard, 

I want to tell them about the kid I saw at the Natural History Museum

who ran up to a meteorite, hugged it and yelled, “I LOVE YOU, OUTER SPACE!” 

That boy tore a moment in the silence to remind

everyone they are made of Milky Way miracles,

that humanity walked out of the hearts of dead stars to be here,

to understand what a dead star is. 

Light takes a hundred thousand years to cross a galaxy,

but his voice crossed the museum floor in seconds,

sending a flamethrower of diamonds across our faces.

We collectively strung our hearts like bunting above the tiny parade

of his space enthusiasm. 

I hope no-one ever says anything dumb to make him change. 

To the girl I read about who repotted a plant into the ground and decided

“Now the world is your new pants!”

Or the kid who was shaking the trunk of the mulberry tree and declared he was stirring the sky – 
I hope you made soup the size of the sea. 

I want to use your voices as medicine for every moment of apathy or shame,

for every moment we forget we’re dazzling in our flesh suits,

that we can unzip ourselves and return face-first into the galaxy,

that we can think about walking upside down on mountain tops,

that we can be friends with forests, talk to gods,

re-imagine the fractal formation of

everything. 

For those of us who grew up not heard, not listened to or

not believed,

who were dismissed with the flick of a hand,

those crescent-moon cuts still sting.

They are carried under our skin, in our hair, they scratch us behind the eyes and are pushed into our DNA like metal into dough.

If I could, Meteorite Boy, I’d put you on my hip and carry you back through time.

I’ll invent microphones and speakers 

so I may blast you deep to the past, to those

days where we felt we were not enough,

where we tempted a different ending.

You could yell “I LOVE YOU, OUTER SPACE!” directly into those

moments

where we kept asking to be more.