30 in 30 2016: #15 Oh what came of the things we once believed?

Oh what came of the things we once believed?

I can’t believe I used to hide on evenings
before holidays hoping to catch glimpses
of whatever mythical creature was to crawl
into my home that night to leave me candy and/or presents.

Steal their secrets because
I had BIG plans for a flying sleigh
and a bunny that made chocolate.
These are the stories I grew out of when
people stopped trying to convince me they were true.

When I was a kid there were stories
of pizzas with anchovies being a gross option
that was all over the place.
To this day I’ve never been
to a place that offered it as a topping.

I’m still wondering where
all the fish loving pizza eaters went.
Did they ever even really exist
or was anchovie pizza always
just a lie to scare kids into
accepting the plain cheese an adult picked up for them?

88 miles per hour isn’t as fast as I thought it was.
I never travelled back in time and mostly no one noticed,
except that one cop that saw me.
Maybe he was jealous of my sweet ride.

Then there are the stories with
a bit of painful truth wrapped up
in enough fluff to make it seem comforting.

College is the golden ticket
to a career and upper middle class fulfillment.
That one’s still pretty sore
even though I dropped that 23 year long
fantasy that was shoved into my face
along with the mysterious threat
of my “permanent record”
that would prevent me from
getting anywhere in life
because it will follow me
with black marks about how
I was regularly tardy to a class
or failed to turn in an assignment on time.

These stories took years of reality
to wear through my belief in the fluff
and feel the pokes and jabs
from the hidden truths I should have seen.