Back When

BACK WHEN


Why do we have to be enemies?
Why can’t be friends?
Why can’t we go back to the way it was
A long time ago, back when

We played football though we had no idea
How to throw or tackle.
We told jokes around the campfire,
Then we giggled and we cackled.

When we were too young to understand
Because we were too young and stout
To realize what those big kids and grown-ups
Were all talkin’ about.

Why do we have to be rivals?
Why can’t we go back to bein’ friends,
The kind of kids we had been long before,
Like the type that we were back then,

Like the days when we were in recess,
And we gossiped about all the people we disliked.
And we giggled when cute boys passed us,
And talked about the ones we liked.

Like the days when all we had to worry about
Was getting mud in between our toes,
Or when we ran and fell onto the grass,
And came home with stains on our clothes.

Or the days when we slid down the slides,
Or had sleepovers, talking for hours.
Took baths in our childhood homes,
And dreaded the day we had to take showers.

What happened to the words, ‘hey pal’,
Whenever we walked by our friends.
Why can’t it go back to the way time was,
Before our adulthood began,

Why do we have to be adversaries?
What happened to our friendship’s past?
It’s a hard-learned truth, for we grew up,
And like our childhood, we knew it’d never last.

But still I can’t see the hard truth,
Because despite the fact and even
Though our futures are now for the adults and matured,
I wish we could go ‘back when’.