The Dandelion of his Laughter: Matthew Robbins

 

A golden afternoon where the airy cotton clouds sway and slide across the azure summer sky.

She twines clover and long, delicate stems of grass into a crown of curiosity,

dreams, fancies, and a young crush interwoven in the innocent circlet of dandelions.

“He loves me, he loves me not,” spoken in giggling whispers

as she speaks her childish chant to the breeze

until her sisters hear and laugh; her smile fades to shame.

A birthday memory tinged with his embarrassed shame,

under the great big sky in the shadow of the cliff and the eagle lifted by the breeze,

and the boy overcome by his wild wonder and curiosity,

defies security and caution to leap on the bare back of the horse, heedless of the whispers.

The horse bucks and the boy is feral, clinging with defiance until landing among dandelions.

In the schoolyard and in the corner of the playground, past the time of flowering dandelions,

a tetherball swings violently back and forth and the boy cheers while the girl feels shame

as the other kids celebrate his powerful blow to the tetherball in excited whispers,

knowing that she is too short to reach the ball smashed around the top near the sky.

He turns to the small group gathered to celebrate his victory, the outcome no curiosity.

No one notices until too late that she shimmies up the pole to win, revived by the breeze.

The boy names her “Amazon Lady” and she carries the name playing football in frozen breezes

and at camps playing team-building maneuvers under hot suns the color of dandelions.

She builds her persona around the image for years following and, curiously,

it follows her to high school soccer where she only remembers her pride and not her shame.

Life adventures take the boy and the girl in very different directions, under very different skies,

yet the girl carries the boy in her heart as a complex, conflicted memory in prayers whispered.

Time and trauma age both the boy and girl, who know not of the other except for whisperings.

Both spiral through joy, heartache, building dreams and losing them to fickle breezes.

She heals and grows, he falls deeper into unhealed wounds as seasons mark the skies.

Their pasts bind them together as friends full of memories like a chain of dandelions.

Childhood friendships are often in the beginning, sweet, simple, free from shame — 

beautiful imprints on hearts with eyes to drink in the beauty and goodness with open curiosity.

Along the journey, deep wounds in the boy slowly steal his joy and his curiosity.

When the girl reconnects with childhood friends on this side of her struggles, they whisper

that the boy is losing his way, further ensnared in pain, addictions — trapped by shame.

The girl hears this news in far-off lands, and her heart aches for the news carried on the breeze.

Deep silver strands of sorrow and the weight of the world now crown that hair once dandelion.

When she hears he is gone, she weeps and lifts her prayers for God to hold that boy in the sky.

Sky holds the boy now; the dandelion

of his laughter fades, but the breeze still carries her whispered prayers.

She heals, and curiosity once again takes the place of shame.

 

Koukoua, K. (2026). Matthew in the sky [AI-generated image created with Sider, based on a 

publicly posted obituary photograph of Matthew Robbins]. Sider.