The Sailed Ship of Innocence
A free-verse poem written on the theme of familial love
Do you guys remember when
you made me believe?
How when I said I wanted the red
toy car and it magically
appeared under the Christmas tree
that you two worked so hard to put up?
You guys didn’t tell me it was
you who bought the car.
Do you guys remember
when you made me believe?
When you told me to put my tooth under my pillow
for the tooth fairy will visit me?
The next day, I found bills under my pillow
all crumpled up.
Why didn’t the tooth fairy give me
neater bills?
Why were they so crumpled as if it was a
struggle to put them under my pillow?
The tooth fairy doesn’t even fly
across the night skies of the Korean peninsula
yet you guys wanted me to believe,
like all my American friends
that the tooth fairy and Santa truly existed.
Oh, and I believed.
Before it was too late for Santa
or the tooth fairy to exist in my mind,
I used to imagine a world
where Santa flew his reindeer
magically over my head laughing
Ho Ho Ho and dipping his cookies in milk.
I used to imagine a world
where the tooth fairy flew,
with glitters like Tinker Bell, across the night sky,
all before it was too late.
For loving and caring for me,
for allowing me to believe, like my American friends,
before I could believe no longer,
thank you both.
Because at a certain point, believing magic
like Santa or the tooth fairy, becomes
unfathomable.
impossible.
Because the ship
has
sailed.
Far gone, the ship that carries
my childish beliefs and wishes,
once that ship has sailed
it can never
come
back.
Do you guys remember the night of
Christmas Eve at our hotel in Vegas?
You don’t, because you never knew that
while I was looking for my socks
inside your suitcase, I lost my innocence.
Santa no longer existed in my mind,
because the Lego set I found in your suitcase
was the very gift that “Santa” gave me the next day.
After that, Santa could never get on his reindeer
and make his way back to me,
just as the tooth fairy could never fly
and make her way back to me.
Because that ship of innocence
that contained my thoughts and wishes
of Santa, the tooth fairy, and just about
anything else magical,
that
ship
has
sailed.