Like fingerprints touching a shattered mirror, I felt hollowed out and empty, slicing myself open with every harsh and broken edge, unable to heal. I had been a simple girl with a head full of shattered illusions and a mouth full of everything I'd ever been too afraid to say.
To the dirt roads, I returned, back to the fields of nostalgia that blew in the rare, humid breeze. Like picture framed memories, I re-entered each scene that had once been only childhood images to find it altered, mechanical, the sepia tint that it always had been stained with turned steely grey.
My hands were empty, my bags were full of only the temporary, and my eyes held a thousand stories as to why my boots kicked up the dust with such recklessness, for my boots had walked down murkier roads than this one.
I had one more road to walk down, one more chance to find a less rocky path, a brighter sky, a moment where I would no longer feel empty, my body no longer echoing out tales from my past.
This is a story of my heart and its tether.
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