Innocence Dies Shawna Marie O’Neil ----------------- Once a happy girl singing to a flower now a heartbroken woman drowning in tears. The flowers had held smiles…             The sunlight shone for her… but all that is gone in the blanched moonlight of reality; the starlight killed (her dreams) The storm tried to save her from the dark; sparkling tears scream at the midnight rain for deliverance but maturation chokes out the light from the falling waters as she conforms to the starlight. Her spirit should be grinning in adulthood’s drifting shadow but instead, she flies the dreary darkness the moon as her only light but without her child-smiles. A mourning black sun dashes through this childish world warning of the night that kills, But none of us believe in endless sleep at twilight