Her hair is tangled and her feet are bare, but she's happy here where they have to leave her alone and she's safe from their judgements. She swings from branches and runs across endless fields of sweet and musty grass, with nothing but the sun pressing down on her. Sometimes she climbs trees above crowded sidewalks and silently watches the people walk by underneath. She knows they won't look up, but she can never decide whether that makes her happy or lonely.

She can run faster. Sometimes when the ground is racing under her feet and the wind is whipping through her hair, she believes that she's flying like Peter Pan, and her happy thought is a big dog with a wagging tail or a hot woodstove in the morning or a fort made out of hay bales or a slingshot, handle wound with twine. When she's running, leaping, flying over rocks and bushes, under branches, it's easy to forget all the monsters in pursuit.

She's faster than all of them.

Written in Creative Journalling Class.