How is it that I'm here?
Was it just a yester year
that I made a fort of sticks
Scraped chalk across my doorsteps bricks

It's as if I was just watching
some other boy grow old
and some young man struggle
to turn his little life into gold

That slowly aging young man
Still truly believes he can
as he sifts through empty sand
He counts the shiny lumps upon his hand

How is it that I'm here?
And how should I presume?

I have molded every sulking hour
every tear upon my face
and made every laugh a symphony
in its utter disgrace

to comb my hair upon my head
and start each day with such dread
To pull away the skin and fat
to remove all that creates the mask

pulling tugging on my skin
expression is not at all within

Oh the variables of a life
counted in those grains of sand
or hours lined up on a wall
facing end to end

But never do they begin
I cannot have them back again.