From the day I woke to living

  Til each night I go to sleep

  I find myself surrounded

  By the dark and angry deep

  And then I'm alone with sand

  Castles I can build

  With walls and turrets rising

  Some of them are beautiful

  Sublime

  Others built too close to shore

  Are touched by waves and there no more

  Just moments after laying

  The foundation

  And then

  A person stands there next to me

  We build a castle by the sea

  He says that's sweet

  Let's build it higher yet

  But each night

  My island sinks beneath the tide

  Castles don't build higher

  Tomorrow comes

  And then I'm alone with sand

  The person that was next to me

  He builds his castles inland

  From "stone" and "steel"

  And love and hopes and dreams

  And next door they say

  There's a castle built by someone else

  There's a city

  There's a world

  Of everyone but me

  Who builds castles

  While I build sand castles by the sea

  The castles that they build

  All grow and rise and fall

  Each changing as the days or years go on

  The simplest ones are stone or mud

  Made only days before

  The grandest are of gold

  Forty fifty years made tall

  And everyone is building

  Friendships as they talk and laugh

  Lovers as they smile

  Strangers as they pass upon the street

  Castles made of hopes and dreams

  Are built in every moment

  With every single person that they meet

  There's only sand upon my island

  No mud or gold or steel

  Which makes me think that maybe

  None of those are real

  Well maybe they are real for all of them

  But not for me

  I've learned that castles built inland

  Can last for ages

  That even huts of mud or sticks

  Can last for weeks or years

  Really?

  No matter how I pile up sand

  It falls

  Even if I fall asleep

  Inside a massive sheltered keep

  With walls built tall by many hands

  When morning breaks it's gone

  And then I'm alone with sand

  The people come and go with time

  Some build a day or three

  But no one ever sees the castles

  Drown beneath sea

  They think they're built

  Of stone or mud or steel

  But mud and stone and steel

  Don't disappear

  Which means it's me

  Perhaps we build a castle

  You of wood and I of sand

  And days go by and then we meet again

  I have no answers to your stories

  No insight to your mind

  No feelings for your hopes or fears or dreams

  No castle made of memory

  No proof we ever met

  Nothing left but sand beside the sea

  So who would spend their days

  Building castles that can't be

  Except for me?

  It's hard to hope that someone

  Would choose to live on sand

  When others offer mud or stone or steel

  It's hard to watch as people build just once

  Then walk away

  Because sand castles aren't things

  They understand

  It's hard to watch my castles wash away

  Sometimes I end up crying

  As the tide comes in

  And then I'm alone with sand