Childhood is improvised survival. You are thrown into this brutal world, fragile and innocent, fighting for your faculties. The soft spot on your skull hardens and you charge headstrong into tomorrow and tomorrow's tomorrow. Scrappy optimism keeping one foot chasing the other under an endless sky.

You gaze up through the tall grass at taller buildings and call them castles. You sit down to a plate of crackers and apples to find a feast. You face every hardship with a smile and shout it back from whence it came.

That is, until one day you blink and find that the castles are crumbling. The food stops simply finding your plate. You force a grin and try to shout away those hardships but they've learned not to fear you.

You're getting older and bigger but the sky stays the same size. You worry about tomorrow and tomorrow's tomorrow. All those questions seem to blend into one: How did you get here?

You were busy chasing dragonflies and beating up the rainbow. You were busy surviving. You didn't know that the happiest place on Earth had a cost of admission.

So you sit outside the gate and watch the fireworks through the bars.