They told me it's time to grow up and put my childhood away forever. They gave me a tiny chest with a brass key to lock away the remnants hugging my heart. I open the lid to discover lost things and long ago memories, nestled amongst forgotten daydreams.
There's a hole in my pocket, scattering loose pebbles and feathers and fallen stars; even the key to the door slipped through a crack in the floorboards. I peer through the keyhole and watch the sun falling in slanted pools across my fallen treasures. Out here I dance with evening's shadows.
It's the hiding that frightens me. Sometimes, when I stare into the looking glass, I catch a shadowy glimmer–– there, in the eyes. A ghost buried deep within, hovering from view like a long lost secret, covered beneath the dusts of time. It scurries away from my beckoning fingers, nestling out of sight; a whisper, always locked away, forever hidden.
The colors are melting away, leaving behind a greying black and white world. Lost souls sleepwalking through the streets take no notice; but I am not content with the consuming night. 
Tomorrow, you said, sealing the promise. Tomorrow.
My dreams are fragile butterfly wings, a flutter inside my heart. The world tries to steal them, blow them away with the Autumn wind. What they don't realize is that, once born, my dreams can never be caged. 
Magic hangs in drapes across my eyelids. In yesterday’s nightdreams I was the Sugar Plum Fairy dancing on a glittered stage, bathed in prisms of rainbow sunlight. Tomorrow I shall transform into a swan, framed in soft feathers and dipped in the silvery moon.
Autumn’s breath is descending, coating my skin. My fingers are sticky with carmel and night’s dust are speckles on my eyelids. Outside, ghosts wander through the fog, phantoms in the night. I light a fire in the hearth to keep their shadows away. 
Sometimes I am lost, an evaporating vapor in ocean mist. I've misplaced a part of my soul. 
I still remember how to get to Neverland, but some days I've forgotten how to fly. Fairy dust slips through my fingers; I hide it in a jar and lock it away, where the Ticking Crocodile won't find it. 